an overall cool-ish season so far

I know basically nothing about Belgium surrealist painter Rene Magritte, other than he’s the guy who made two of the most famous paintings of the 20th century:

This is not a post about Rene Magritte; I just wanted to title it “Summer Marches On” and when I typed that into Google¹, one of the first page results was Magritte’s painting, which is fascinating if you think about it in the context of its time. Late 30s Belgium, sitting neutral, watching Hitler’s rise to power. Two years later it would be occupied by Nazi forces, with King Leopold III surrendering without consulting his government at all, and would stay occupied until Allied forces liberated the country in October of 1944.

Magritte remained in Brussels during this occupation and his art style turned very different while the Nazis were around, adopting a more colorful, so-called “Renoir” style. For example, here is “The glass house” from 1939:

And here is “Forethought” from 1943:

Pretty different style, eh? The guy clearly didn’t want the Nazis asking him pointed questions about surrealism. I don’t blame him; they wouldn’t get it.

This isn’t a post about Rene Magritte, but god damn are his paintings amazing.

In case you think film reboots are a unique endeavor, might I suggest this:

Yes, Magritte painted a sequel. He actually painted several paintings over and over again in his lifetime. I won’t get into that though, because it’s kind of depressing.

Life

June was a good month. It started with two 5ks on the same day, which was new for me. Parkrun #15 in the morning and then the Starlight Run in the evening. I thought I was going to run slow for both of them but I didn’t, and it was fine. The Starlight Run was great because people were cheering us on even if they were mostly waiting for the parade later that night. Also there were a lot of children wanting high fives along the route. Like, too many. Sorry I didn’t high five all of you.

Then the next week I went on a date. A first date with someone I met on Hinge. I think it was Hinge. It wasn’t a great first date, we didn’t have a lot of compatibility and she seemed weirdly adversarial at times. And I drank too much, which these days is like two beers. Which meant I babbled on about nonsense. Eh. I learned from it; namely, that waiting for the Right One™ is the best idea, but also, you can’t find the Right One™ if you don’t go and look.

The week after that I ran the second of my Portland Parks & Rec 5ks, out in Lents Park. It was nice to actually run this one, when I had to walk the first one because of nagging injuries. And then that weekend I drove to Redmond, Oregon to run the Redmond Run. It was great! The drive to central Oregon was pretty and the cabin I stayed in was very cute and the run itself was a blast. Redmond is close to Bend, so it felt like a nice small race, like a little group of runners wanting to do something over the summer. I also got to walk around Smith Rock, which is beautiful.

Then! The final full week of June I drove to Grants Pass to have a little mini family reunion with my parents, my brother Russ, and his girlfriend Lori. Had a great time, despite what my friend Will thinks of his hometown. Drove to Crater Lake, saw a play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and drove around Grants Pass so my mom could take pictures of the bears there.

It was a lovely little vacation and it was great to see my family again.

In July, I ran my first ever quarter marathon with the Foot Traffic Flat, up on Sauvie Island, in the northwest of Portland. My first proper “distance” race, it went pretty well! I was pleased with my result, even if I got confused at the end because I thought it was a 10k, and not 10.55k, which meant when my watch beeped, alerting me that I had completed my 10k, there was no finish line in sight, causing me to wonder, “Did I make a wrong turn and now I’m following the half marathon crowd?” It was fine though, I just needed to run a bit more.

A week later I got the stomach flu! Yeehaw.

My race schedule has tapered quite a bit since the Flat. I don’t have another 5k until August, the Garlic Festival 5k in North Plains, OR. Since then I’ve been running more and more and getting a lot of PRs in my 5k runs at parkrun. I think I might get a sub 30 minute time by the end of the summer. Fingers crossed.

Now, I’m trying to get a new passport so I can go on a trip next year. I don’t think I’ll get it in time for cheap flights though. For some reason I lost or threw away my old passport, I have no idea, but I wish I hadn’t because it would’ve been a lot easier to get it renewed if I had kept it.

The objective is England. I want to run my 50th parkrun at Bushy Park in London, where parkrun started. I want to have one of those Big Vacations. I got a credit card and everything.

50/90

I skipped FAWM (February Album Writing Month) this year, having absolutely no desire to write music then. But with FAWM comes this little side quest called the 50/90 challenge; 50 songs in 90 days, from July 4 to October 1. (Or something like that, don’t math me.)

This year 50/90 is on the FAWM site and it looks great! They really did a great job of integrating it. So I’m writing little songs there. No real production value (not that I had that to begin with), just a geetar and me coming up with shit quick so I can grease up the ol’ creativity wheels.

I’m going to share one with you here. It’s the one I like the most, so far. It’s called “the horizon” and I kind of aped Phoebe Bridgers a bit but whatever.