Secret Turns

I don't want to turn this into a Labanotation blog, so I have to really rein myself in. Left unchecked, I could probably blog about Labanotation every single day.

The day before yesterday I had my weekly Labanotation lesson with Ilene Fox, the former Executive Director of the Dance Notation Bureau in New York. When she first started tutoring me we did our lessons in person, but she just lives that far away as to make it too inconvenient, especially lugging all the Labanotation books with me. So we do the lessons by phone. At first we weren't sure if that would even be possible, because we needed to draw diagrams together, and demonstrate movements; but actually it works out pretty well. When we need to draw something, we just share documents online, and that gives us pretty much a real-time view of what each other is drawing.

So, Wednesday we were doing our lesson, and at a certain point I realized that I had completed all the research I needed in order to write up the first major chapter of my Labanotation text. Oh yeah - I'm writing a Labanotation text. Basically a textbook-style explanation of how to use all it's myriad elements. It's an immense task, I've been working on it for years, and I've still only just barely scratched the surface.

So, I recently concluded that I had to make directional gesture one of the first, primary topics covered. I had resisted the idea, because I couldn't see a way to explain directional gesture without getting into all kinds of discussions about locomotion and other topics, which would lead to just a big mess. If I was going to cover directional notation, I wanted to do it clean.

But I'd concluded that I couldn't avoid it, because directional gesture really is central to Labanotation, and it just can't be put off. So I'd been agonizing over how to cover the topic in a clean way, without bringing in tons of extraneous details from all over Labanotation.

I knew that I couldn't do directional gesture without also covering the crosses of axes - at least some of them - because the crosses of axes determined where up, front, left, right, and so on all actually were. Can't do much directional gesturing if you don't know where the directions are. So I knew I had to explain that topic. And even though crosses of axes are also related to locomotion, I figured I would just have to cover the crosses of axes again when it came time to talk about locomotion. There just wasn't going to be a way to avoid that; and for that matter, I'd have to cover directional gesture itself again at that time anyway. So it didn't bother me that much. Locomotion in Labanotation is just a totally special-case topic. A lot of stuff was going to need to be re-explained when it came time to cover it.

So for directional gesture I'd need to cover the crosses of axes, but to cover the crosses of axes I needed to explain the front symbols. Front symbols were needed because they were always used to express where to read the front of the performer. A number of crosses of axes derived their conception of front directly from the most recent front symbols. So I had to drag front symbols in as well.

But there I was stuck, because the only way I knew of to change a performer's front, and thus invoke a front symbol, was to make that performer turn or pivot on stage, or do some other kind of locomotion. So there was locomotion again, sticking it's nose in! Or it's feet, more precisely.

Trying to explain how to notate gesture in Labanotation, without making reference to locomotion, is a really tough nut to crack, it turns out. Though a very important one.

But! I totally won, because I remembered the secret turn symbols. Secret turn symbols exist specifically to allow the notator to express a change of front, without actually moving the performer on stage. They're not used often, but they exist, and they were just what I needed.

It was perfect! I had figured out how to explain directional gesture, and none of my dependencies required any sort of explanation of locomotion. Not only that, but I'd managed to restrict the number of dependencies to just three - crosses of axes, front symbols, and secret turns.

That was all months ago, actually. After that I started organizing the research, which meant going through Ann Hutchinson's Labanotation book, and her nine red books, and gathering together all the information about each of those topics.

Secret turns were actually the easiest of them, followed by front symbols. The thorny one was the crosses of axes, and that's what Ilene and I had been talking about for several lessons before the one on Wednesday, and on Wednesday as well. But finally! We had reached the end of that topic. That's when I realized that there was nothing standing in my way anymore. I could write up what I'd learned, and it would represent the first really significant progress I'd make in creating this larger text.

I'm pretty enthusiastic about it. I'm already almost done with the chapter on secret turns. Like I said, that was always the easiest of the topics; but still. A nice step forward.

Comic Con

I went to Comic Con with Naima on Sunday. Actually I went alone while she was home doing her costume (Fiona dressed as Poison Ivy), and met up with her there.

It was rough. I went last year too, and my main objection to the whole thing is that it looks like a trade show. It was just like when I used to work at startups, and they'd send me to trade shows, and there would be these huge booths set up for all the big companies, each one trying to outdo the others, and the little ones all vying covetously for bigger and better booth locations. And all the high-tech geeks milling around, trying out the fancy new gadgets that hadn't hit the market yet, or that were hitting the market right at that moment in a precisely coordinated 'launch' event, timed to correspond with whichever particular trade show it was.

That's what Comic Con is. Same thing. Big booths everywhere, with the major brands all out in force pretending to connect with a fan base they only want to exploit.

The only reason I attended again this year was to see the "Artist's Row" - a special part of the convention area, segregated off from the main area, where actual real artists who have been working on their actual real art, get to set up really tiny booths and show off their unknown works to people who care about that sort of thing.

At least, that's how it was last year. The artists were there, doing their own self-published stuff, or working with a really small publisher to get their stuff out. It was great! All different styles of art were represented; all different levels of talent; all different ambitions for success.

This year, on the other hand.... no. The 'Artist's Row' was just a place for the famous successful artists who had already gotten picked up by the big companies, to sit around and be admired. I'm sure the fans loved it, but I was non-plussed. Where were the little people who worked so hard in the face of obscurity? Where were the artists who were also fans? Gone.

When I met up with Naima, her primary ambition was to meet Ross Campbell, author of 'Wet Moon' and 'The Abandoned'. Really lovely stuff. I've read it too. So we navigated through the thronging hordes to his table and she spoke to him for awhile. He remembered her because she'd done a costume of one of his characters awhile back, and put the photos on deviantart; and he's seen them and posted a comment about how much he liked her rendition. So they bonded over that.

It was a pleasant exchange, and I got to talk to him too. It turns out there will be no sequel to "The Abandoned" because of intellectual property issues that seem unlikely to be resolved. Too bad.

So that was one good experience; and it was also nice to see the various costumes that some of the people wore. Some of them had a lot of thought and ingenuity put into them.

But at bottom, it was just a trade show. Ross Campbell asked me how I was liking the show, and I told him how disappointed I was, and how my whole appreciation for that kind of event was centered around unknown artists showing off the stuff they were working on.

He confirmed that Comic Con was not the place to go for that, and said he preferred the quieter events too. He suggested that the smaller cons would probably have a lot more of what I was looking for.

So yeah. Big revelation. The enormous corporate-sponsored convention is going to be too corporate. I should've put it together before ever attending the first time; but my brain can be slow on occasion, particularly when it comes to anticipating the cultural aspects of something I haven't experienced yet. I know a lot of people who would have immediately and correctly assessed Comic Con without ever having attended. Oh well. My naïveté is also a great strength, so I won't beat myself up too bad about it.

But I think I'll be looking more towards smaller conventions from now on.

The Beard

For awhile now, I've had a pretty big beard, but a couple of days ago I shaved it completely off, not just with clippers, but with an actual razor; and I bought an electric shaver (foil, not rotary) to use from now on.

The whole time with the beard, was really my first experience. I've gone unshaven before, but I've never actually been bearded until a bunch of months ago, when I really stopped shaving, and would do things like let the barber trim it for me. The first time he tipped my head all the way back and started in with the scissors, I was like, "whoa! You mean this is what happens?" I really wasn't expecting it.

I felt pretty comfortable with a beard. It covered up my face. Instead of all my crazy facial expressions, people just saw... a beard. Instead of judging me by the way I was looking at them, people judged me by... the beard. Growing up, I never had the kind of hair I could hide behind, but if I'd had it, I would have hid behind it. The hair would have been like the tall legs of Mommy that I used to put between me and strangers when I was little. I never had that kind of hair; but now, I had... the beard.

It completely changed my interactions with the world. That's really not surprising, since I essentially had an entirely new face, and it stands to reason that when people meet for the very first time, for example as they pass each other on the street, they respond to the face and the rest of the initial appearance, more than any particular inner quality.

With the beard, I sometimes noticed a woman checkin' me out. I'd never noticed that before. And sometimes someone would give me a smile as we passed each other. That was also new. I had always been more used to the other person getting an annoyed expression, and keeping their eyes aimed elsewhere.

What can I say. There are only a few possibilities here, for the clean-shaven Zack. First, I could be so devastatingly gorgeous that women are too bowled over to look directly at me. Second, I could be simply ugly, to the extent that they want nothing to do with me. Or third, my face could just naturally express itself in ways that people find creepy or lascivious, or in some other way unpleasant.

Traditionally, I've taken door number three. And while the many people who love me tell me there's nothing creepy about me, I have indeed gotten that kind of feedback from people who didn't love me, from time to time over the years. Apparently I do creep certain people out.

The beard wiped that entire identity away, apparently. Suddenly I was just... that good looking guy with the beard.

Before the beard, I also always used to wear my glasses. The glasses were a permanent fixture. They went on in the morning and came off at night, and had rimless frames that allowed them to seem to merge like alien technology with my face.

Every once in awhile someone would tell me they wanted to see me without the glasses, and they'd be very enthusiastic about it. Then I'd take the glasses off, and they'd get this disappointed look, and say something like, "oh... ok, put them on again." For me, this tended to confirm my door-number-three hypothesis.

But I've never been overly awed by negative opinions of me. I was the kid who got picked on in school, and I learned fairly early that the only opinion that matters about me is my own. So the whole door-number-three thing isn't really this great millstone, though definitely I would have preferred door number one (devastatingly gorgeous).

In any case, negative opinions about me are not so hard to take. I wouldn't keep a beard or keep a pair of eyeglasses, just so I'd be less disturbing to anyone. So actually, around the time I started growing the beard, I also got rid of my glasses, and replaced them with contact lenses.

That was a great, great decision. I don't think I ever consciously realized that a big piece of equipment sitting on my face was not likely to work very well. But it's true. Contact lenses are so much more like having my own eyes just work right. Glasses always distorted the world, ignored my peripheral vision, changed the colors of things, and sometimes even reflected the sunlight directly onto my retina off the edges of the lenses, causing pain and perhaps damage. I'm very happy with the contacts, and I don't really plan to go back.

It's actually funny too, because Kar loves men with beards and men with glasses; and I've always worn glasses, and she's always been all sparkly-eyed about me and my glasses; but on this last visit to San Francisco I had the beard but no glasses, and it was kind of like turning my face upside down for her - all of a sudden she was sparkly-eyed about the beard, but there were no glasses. At one point during the visit, she told me how shocked she was that she'd been able to accept me without the glasses; and that she didn't think she could've done it if I hadn't also had the beard. (of course she could've - she loves me deeply - but that's what she said)

So a couple of days ago when I finally shaved off the beard, I realized I not only didn't have the beard, but I didn't have the glasses either. My entire set of defensive armor against actually being seen, had been wiped out in one blow. Nothing stood between me and the yawning maw of door number three.

In fact, it was really the first time I'd been able to even see my own face in the mirror without glasses, since I was a little kid. Permanent fixture, remember? If I took off the glasses, my whole head would just look blurry, like a big pink puffball, with brown on top, in the mirror. But now with the contacts and the clean-shaven face, I could actually see myself at last.

I'm pretty! OK, not devastatingly gorgeous, and I think even I can see some of those creepy facial expressions from door number three. But actually it's a half-way decent face! I was surprised. I never would have suspected that I might actually look human with all the coverings removed. I'd figured me for maybe a Steve Buscemi look, at best. He's not actually bad looking, but he sure plays some funny looking people. I figured that was me. Donny, from 'The Big Lebowski'; or Carl Showalter from 'Fargo'. But it was nice to look in the mirror and not have the sense that people would run screaming, or cross to the other side of the street, or do something else weird.

So that's the story of the beard.

French Again

Yesterday I had an appointment to visit the Consulat général de France à New York. I actually arranged the appointment a couple of months ago, before my trip to San Francisco, to renew my French passport. This is something that's been weighing on me for years, because the passport expired long, long ago, and I was really scared it was too late to get it renewed. I thought the French government might be like, "too late! We don't want you any more."

There was also the problem of gathering together sufficient identification to satisfy the requirements. I didn't have much. Just the passport and a few scraps. I had my American passport, and other American documents; but not much French stuff. When I made the appointment, I expected to get a big explanation about how I didn't have nearly enough material to move forwards, and to come back when I had more material.

Instead, it was so great! It turned out that one of the scraps in my folder was actually a card that had been issued by the consulate itself long ago; and they were able to accept some of my American ID cards as well.

So they actually printed out my French birth certificate (certifying that I was born in America), and gave it to me. Hot diggity! They also gave me a new consulate ID card. And they said they'd get my passport to me in about 10 days. No need to make another appointment. All I have to do is walk in and pick it up.

It's such a weight off my mind. For years I've been kinda sorta avoiding this whole problem, because I was scared of how it would turn out. And now, abracadabra, it's as good as done.

When I left San Francisco, I actually considered moving to Google's Paris office instead of the New York office. Ultimately I decided I wanted to be close to my parents, who were getting older, and my sister, who was raising her own young kids. But I gave a lot of thought to going to Paris instead.

In Paris, I would have been within a metro ride of a dozen of my cousins; and within a convenient train ride of over a hundred more. I also would have had the freedom to travel anywhere else in the European Union; to improve my ability with the French language; and to get real health care for the first time in my life.

Sometimes I regret not going to Paris. It would have been an amazing adventure. But the whole passport issue weighed on me very much then too; and I was just scared to deal with it. And of course, I really did want to be closer to my own immediate family. But sometimes I think about what might have been. And dealing with this passport stuff yesterday has dredged a lot of those feelings up again.

So.... what made me make the appointment now, at long last? Why not when I had actually been considering moving to France? Why not before then? All I can think of is that maybe I finally just felt comfortable enough with myself to confront it at last. And that really fits my sense of the situation pretty well.

Hacker Spaces

The first hacker space I visited was Noisebridge in San Francisco. It was started by a bunch of like-minded people, including my old roommate from before I moved back to New York City. A couple visits ago, he took me to it and showed me around. It was incredible. Thousands of square feet, crammed with all kinds of equipment, books, materials, and a bunch of hardware hackers, hacking around on stuff.

It was also an anarchic do-ocracy, open to the public, and full of neat ideals. A lot of Occupy people connected very strongly with Noisebridge, and even sort of took it over for a time. At least that's how it seemed.

But I was blown away by the whole concept, and was very sad to live in New York and not San Francisco anymore, because only San Francisco had Noisebridge. But as soon as I started raving to my friends about hacker spaces, a lot of them were like, "oh yeah, hacker spaces exist. They're really cool. You don't know about them? They're great! You should go to one of the ones in New York City. There are plenty of them there."

So I was happy again, and I started researching hacker spaces in my town. Unfortunately, they were all kind of far away, and the one I visited that seemed like the best option, was not nearly as big as Noisebridge, and had not nearly the same amount of geeky features. So I abandoned the idea, and thought about maybe setting up a personal hacker space in my apartment. After all, why not?

But that didn't really come to pass. Then last night my ex-girlfriend Lena came over for dinner. Lena always knows lots of things I don't know, in fact she gets paid to know things I don't know. So we were hanging out and I mentioned that I was considering getting a sewing machine, because Kar had used a sewing machine in San Francisco, and it had been really cool, and I'd been able to figure out which sewing machine I wanted for myself, by talking to her about hers (I chose the Brother CS6000i by the way).

At first we started talking about whether a sewing machine required having a large pile of supplementary materials, special scissors, bolts of cloth, and what-have-you, in order to really be useful; but then Lena said, "why don't you just go to the new hacker space over by Union Square! They have sewing machines!"

Boing-ng-ng-ng-ng! went my head. Lo and behold, Hack Manhattan has a place within walking distance of my house. I jumped online, joined their mailing list, created an account on their wiki, introduced myself to all of them, and scheduled time to go visit their space twice in the next two weeks. All within five minutes of learning about them. I was very excited.

Of course, the truth is, I'm not much of a hardware hacker. I don't know electronics, nor am I particularly fluent in designing objects for 3D printing. Yes, I built my own book cases and large impressive work table; but that's just wood and screws and measuring devices. And yes, I'd love to make some weird-ass clothes; but that hasn't happened yet.

So inevitably since last night I've started wondering, do I want to pay the rather high monthly fee for membership in a hacker space, even a really convenient one that has cool hackers in it? It would absolutely be worth it if I were going to spend many hours there and do lots of cool hacks. But if I'm just going to drop in once in awhile and not really do much of anything, then I'd say it wouldn't be worth it.

But I really want to try. Hardware hacking is basically something everyone should be able to do. We should all understand basic electronics, and the fundamentals of engineering. We live in a world literally crawling with invented machines. We should understand this stuff. So, any future course of my life should most certainly include a significant portion of study in this area, regardless of anything else I want to do, or any career I choose to pursue.

So, I'm leaning in that direction. We'll see how I feel after I actually visit the place and see what it's like.

But yeah. Dinner with Lena. We had sushi and swapped stories about romance and body modification. She seemed happier than I'd seen her in a long time. It was a very pleasing hangout.

Swum Dry

Yesterday was Columbus Day, but I tried to swim anyway. This often happens. I'll get up, organize the swimming stuff, walk over to the recreation center, only to discover.... it's Saturday! Or something like that. This time it was, it's Columbus Day! And there's always this one guy who is there watching over the place, and he'll unlock the door and be like, "sorry, man. Would you like a copy of the schedule?" Me and that guy are developing quite a rapport, just from me coming in on days when the pool is closed.

The thing is, because of the way I've set up the ritual, it's not a failure. To fulfill the ritual, I need to get up in time, get dressed, and make it to the recreation center. If I don't get to swim because the place is closed, I've still fulfilled the ritual. Technically I suppose, the rule is, "touch the water". But making it to the main entrance also works for me. So whenever it happens, I always walk home smiling to myself, thinking, "I did it!"

A few months ago, I had this realization, that everyone weighs the same in the pool. I told that to one of my friends and she was like, "speak for yourself!" But it's true. We're basically weightless in there. Connected to that idea, I realized that whatever injury I may have, whatever physical weakness I may be laboring under, whatever it is, it's going to be easier to deal with in the pool. Torn ligaments, broken bones, you name it. It'll bother me less in the weightlessness of the water.

I told that to another one of my friends, and she said that the water pressure itself was enough to exacerbate her knee injuries. Fine. And OK sure, I guess if you're bleeding from some kind of wound, the pool isn't so great for that either.

But still, it's really true! No matter how crappy I feel in the morning, no matter what aches and pains have been bothering me, I know I'll feel better in the pool. And that really motivates me! Actually it's more of an anti-unmotivator. Double negative. It stops me from feeling like I don't want to go, or like I just can't make it, or something like that.

The psychology of exercise is pretty strange. Back around March, when I was first trying to establish this swimming ritual, I found myself thinking about it in terms of addiction; I found myself justifying the ritualization of it in my mind, because it would set up an addictive pattern that would lead to good health. And I was all excited about getting addicted.

I really have to do it though. The aches and stiffness and injuries get too bad to deal with if I don't. When I started in February, I was a mess. By the time Summer came, and the recreation center messed me up by switching to an outdoor pool with essentially private lanes, I had progressed to 30 laps a day, and no more aches. But now, having not swum in a month or so, I've got some of the aches back, and I can barely do 10 laps. If I don't get back into it now that the indoor pool is available again, I'll just go back to aching and suffering again.

So that's a big motivator. The desire for comfort. That's what leads me to walk home after a failed attempt at swimming, smiling and saying, "I did it!"

OK, time for me to head out to the pool.

Making Comics

Saturday I hung out with my friend Naima. She's a talented kid who grew up in the South Bronx. In high school she had a terrible record, mainly because living with her family put unreasonable demands on her, like having to stay home from school to take care of her baby sister. But her teachers loved her, and gave her all sorts of glowing letters of recommendation for college, because she was really smart and creative, and worked hard when she could, and had her own way of thinking about everything.

She doesn't exactly have the worst situation of anyone else I know. But it's hard for her to disentangle herself from the various family conflicts and other problems that keep her where she is. She ended up going to community college and dropping out - I wish she'd tried for a SUNY school instead, like Purchase, but the prospect of leaving home was too scary, I guess. Now she's in her mid-twenties, and trying to figure out some kind of job situation that might free her from living in her mom's apartment with the rest of her family, sniping at each other for the rest of their lives and going nowhere.

One of her talents is art. I went to a group show she was in, where one of her paintings won an award. It was very cool. No one in her family showed up. Just me and two other friends of hers. But she loves doing artistic things. She loves costuming, and coming up with outrageous masks. She's won cash prizes for zombie costumes in local competitions. Basically, she's great. But her lack of education, and lack of middle-class experience, makes it pretty hard to parlay her skills into jobs and freedom.

One of the things we talked about yesterday was how she could draw some comics. She's really into the idea, and has given it a shot a few times, but she doesn't have any sense of how to organize her work, do multiple drafts, plan a layout. She can draw a good picture, but the idea of what kind of labor might lead to a larger, organized project like a comic book, is foreign to her.

She's done some work though. Some of the stories of her crazy family are perfect for putting into comics. So she's started writing down some of her experiences, and trying to express them as descriptions of each panel of a comic. So yesterday we did this thing where she'd read me the description of one of the panels, and I'd draw it out. Just to show her that a story-line could actually be created. We did about a page of that, and talked about what it meant to whip out a page of drawings like that, and what it meant to do a draft. It's not like she's never heard of any of this stuff before. But the idea of taking those abstract concepts and applying them to her own activity, is a little hard to navigate.

I know how she feels. For a big project, it's often really hard to know where to begin. Big projects also involve a lot of work that has to be tossed out because it reveals things about the project that require starting over in a different way. It's not wasted work, but it's stuff that doesn't make it into the final draft; and it's hard to have faith that this kind of work isn't just totally wasted. It's hard to develop the understanding that the final product, even if it represents a lot of hours of work just by itself, can also represent not even a tenth or a twentieth of the amount of work that went into all the sketching and writing and rewriting and resketching that came before.

She can easily do about 2 hours of drawing per day. That's what she told me. Probably it's more, but even if it isn't, she could whip out some solid drafts in a relatively short time. So we talked a lot about how much time to spend on doing drafts, and what it all meant, and how to go from the draft to the final project.

I'm excited to see what she comes up with. Some of her stories are funny, and some are hard-hitting, and some are just downright twisted. If she just starts drawing them in the form of an actual comic book, that'll be a major step forward.

Scott's Film

Awhile back I went to a Google event - as an alumnus I got an invite, but there were plenty of non-ex-Googler's there as well - and I met a guy named Scott. My main goal when I go to these sorts of events is to talk to lots of people, rather than to stay and hear the lectures. I usually leave after the initial mingling phase, and that was true this time as well; but before I left, Scott and I had a really interesting conversation about our predictions for Google's future, and what we thought it was doing right and wrong; and we exchanged business cards.

It turned out Scott worked in my neighborhood, just a few short blocks from my house, so we met up for lunch, and I invited him to my birthday party that week. At the party he fell in love with my apartment - really my parents' apartment, though they don't live in it - and he asked if he could shoot a film there, that he was working on.

It turned out that Scott had been really into film-making for awhile, and had started a local meetup, and had scrounged together tools and people to make some short films. It was really impressive. That kind of hobby is expensive and difficult. It takes real management skills to get 15 or 20 people to work really hard for virtually no money on three or four disparate days. But he enjoys it.

So I asked my parents if they minded him using the place; and they said it was fine, as long as I had some trusted people there to make sure nothing was stolen; and as long as they didn't totally rearrange the furniture and whatnot.

Yesterday I had lunch with Scott. He'd emailed me a few times while I was in California, partly to keep in touch because of us being friends, and partly by way of managing one of his film resources, making sure the apartment would be available on the days he needed, and giving me the reassurances I needed.

He was skillful about the whole thing. Not too pushy, but clearly following his checklist, making sure everything that needed to get handled, got handled.

Meanwhile I was there in California, and one of the things I always talk about with Kar when I visit, is what it takes to do a job really well. I did all right at Google, but she has been climbing the rungs of executive positions at her job, and is beloved of all, and widely agreed to be just about perfect at whatever she takes on.

So I sort of look at Scott through the lens of how he's going about doing this job he's taken on - making this film.

Up until this lunch yesterday, it seemed as though he was doing a great job as producer, and would probably do great as director when the time came. But then as we were finishing up the meal he told me that if this film didn't "raise any eyebrows", and get shown at festivals, and inspire a studio to want to fund his next movie, that he'd probably give up on film-making.

Maybe he was just expressing the same sort of emotion I've seen from others, where they are putting everything they've got into a project, and just feel like after this they're done.... until it's actually over, and they start getting ideas for the next project.

Or maybe he was expressing another emotion that I've also seen a lot from others, where they have overestimated their own skill, and have been fantasizing about the amazing success they're going to have, and what a big splash they'll make. I've been guilty of that kind of thinking myself.

I've never seen any of his films, so I have no way of knowing what his abilities are really like. But I read his script, and it's pretty dark and depressing - the sort of story that's easier to write than an adventure or a comedy. It had the feel of an early work. So at lunch, when he said he might give up film-making after this if he didn't raise eyebrows, I told him that was nuts, that he shouldn't pin all his hopes on this one effort; and that regardless of the fate of this film, he should definitely keep making more. He'd obviously developed quite a significant ability to organize and produce a film on a budget of just a few thousand dollars. That was not easy, and it was not a common ability for anyone to develop. If this one panned out even to the point of actually being completed, it would stand to reason his next one would be even better.

After I said that, things seemed to get a little awkward though. I think he might have been more encouraged if I'd said that his film had a great chance to raise eyebrows and get picked up by a studio. I think he probably just wanted some generic encouragement like that, instead of being asked to think beyond this one film, and beyond the possibility of the project's success.

So I think I misjudged that conversation, and I felt bad. Later we talked a little about my own future plans, and he was encouraging in exactly the way that I hadn't been, saying that my plans sounded great (even though they sounded sketchy at best), and that it could totally work out (even though it could be completely misguided). So, the contrast struck me. I felt bad as we parted ways at his office and I headed home. I felt as though he felt I'd said his project was going to fail; and as though now, he's got to follow up with me about shooting at my apartment, and manage me as a resource, and just overcome that awkwardness until the job is done. It feels as though once the film is finished now, so is the friendship.

On the other hand!

That'd be a pretty silly thing to get in the way of an actual friendship; and I never have any qualms about reaching beyond that kind of awkwardness to bridge the distance between myself and someone else, especially if I have an appreciation of that person's intrinsic qualities - which in Scott's case, I do. So yeah, I felt bad about that little interchange; but it doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for Scott as a person; I've given way worse offense to others, and I've found that it just doesn't pay to get discouraged by that sort of thing.

Again, I think about Kar, and what she'd do in a similar circumstance... - she'd be her usual ebullient self, and if that didn't work, she'd come up with an appropriate, non-over-the-top apology, explaining what she'd experienced, and expressing a lot of support for the other person. I love Kar. I don't think I quite have her ebullience, or perhaps her keen judgment of situations; but I work OK with what I've got.

Swum

Starting in February I swam every day for months; then Summer came, and the recreation center closed the indoor pool and opened the outdoor pool, switching from circular lanes to single-use lanes, making it essentially only possible for the first 20 people to get a lane. So I switched to a recreation center that was farther away but that kept the circular lanes through the Summer; and that would have been fine, except for having to take the subway every morning. There were some dead eyes on those people in the train, I'm telling you. And they didn't like this very obvious guy with his towel going off to have fun. Or so it felt to me.

One thing and another got in the way too, such as trips to Alaska and California. When I was preparing for the California trip, I learned that my local recreation center would be migrating back to the indoor pool, and the circular lanes, while I was gone. I thought, yippee!

So now I'm back from California, and this morning in spite of jet lag I walked over to the pool in the 7AM darkness. There were all the familiar faces, people who didn't know my name, saying, "hey! Long time no see! Where've you been? Welcome back!"

The whole process is one of ritual, partly inspired by my California friends Kar and James - mainly James. Stumbling around the house, looking out into the dark of night, my first goal is just to get the bathing suit on, the swim cap and ear plugs and lock and keys into my pockets, not forgetting the towel; and just walk out the door. That's the first challenge. I usually get through it either by intentionally remembering how much I love the feel of the water around my body; or by reminding myself that I have to fulfill the ritual, that it's not a ritual if I don't stick to it, and that it'll get easier each time I get it right.

The walk over to the pool is always roughly the same. In Springtime there's daylight, but now it could just as easily be 2AM. No one's out but a few grim cars. That's perfect for me - time to daydream, or read the kindle. Today I read the kindle. I'm up to Chapter 8 of "The Manager As Negotiator", and I've been looking forward to that chapter for quite awhile now. It's very interesting. A detailed account of a budget negotiation between department heads. Rough and tumble.

Then all the hello's and where've you been's from my fellow swimmers, before the door of the recreation center actually opens at 7AM. We file in peacefully. Everyone's nice. No one rushes. We're each on our respective quests for the holy grail. We're each gathering our energy.

In the locker room I have it down to a science, as does everyone else. My particular method is faster than most. My jeans and t-shirt come off immediately and go into the locker, which I lock. The bathing suit is already on; the ear plugs and bathing cap are in its pocket. The flip flops had come off for the jeans; now they're back on. Elapsed time: 5 seconds.

I walk over to the shower; everyone else is still opening up their gym bags or unbuttoning their shirts. I pass quickly through the shower, making sure to get my hair nice and wet. Stepping out again, I slip the ear plugs in first, then the bathing cap. And then out the door into the pool area. I'm very often the first man out of the locker room; about half the time one of the women has made it through her locker room before me and is already in the water. I never know which woman. It could be the same one each time, or not. With the bathing cap and goggles covering their faces, I can't really tell. Autism? Whatever.

I get into the water. This fulfills the ritual. So long as I touch the water, I've done it. I can go home now, job well done, ready to go back the next day.

But why go home? The water is warm and perfect. As I submerge myself, swimming under the floating rope to get to my favorite lane, I realize... I'm flying! This is flight!

I set out doing my usual side stroke. Nice and easy. Before I've finished my first lap, the pool is full of people. All I care about is the feel of my arms and legs cutting through the water, the sense of my own propulsion through this strange yet familiar medium. Since I do the side stroke, both legs and an arm shoot behind me as I push forward; I feel like a squid. Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! Just like a squid in the ocean.

When I was little, after I'd first learned to swim, I apparently had a very distinctive style, that I remember very well. My head would duck under the water, and my hands would form a single scoop at my chest. I would scoop the water down along my body, with my head submerged the whole time, and my eyes open. I was one with the water.

Not anymore. Overweight. Out of shape. Out of breath. Every stroke is a risk of injury. Especially now, after a month and a half on dry land. Will I start to cramp? Will my shoulder give out? Are my knees holding up?

After three laps, I lose count. But I probably didn't do more than ten. It doesn't matter. I touched the water. I completed the ritual. I climb out of the pool triumphant. I didn't give up on swimming. The stupid pool schedule, and traveling, and the people on the train; sure it bothered me, and made it tough to swim in the Summer. But here I am, freshly back from California, back in the water again. Bad shoulder? Pah! I am the Man from Atlantis. I am Aquaman! I am Namor!

Yay for the pool! Yay for the New York City Recreation Center! Yay for me! I am swum!