Parallel Universe

Kennemer Dunes National Park, 360°, today. National park [ parallel universe ]

Above: Chow-chow: Fish from Alaska , Red-Peppers from Spain, Mozzarella from Italy, Spinach and Apple from Holland, Ginger and Garlic from China, Brazilian nuts from Bolivia.

Min/max temperature: 5°C/10°C; humidity: 67%; precipitation: 2 mm; sea level pressure: 1015 hPa; wind: North 17.7 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds: Few 914 m.; Moon: Waxing Crescent, 8% visible

"The myth that program content is determined by the preferences of the viewing majority is widely accepted. Television preferences reflect what viewers are given to choose from. The offerings that are broadcast are determined by commercial considerations as well as popularity ratings, which do not always match. Programs that capture large audiences are discontinued if the people they attract do not fit the age (18 - 49) or income categories that advertisers wish to influence. Thus, popular programs that deliver the wrong kinds of viewers from a commercial standpoint are retired for unfavourable "demographics" despite their wide acceptance because they fetch low advertising rates .[…] Since people who lack purchasing power hold little interest for advertisers, disadvantaged minorities tend to be underexposed in survey samples of television preferences. […] Program production cost per thousand viewers therefore strongly influences what gets televised. With a couple of horses, a makeshift saloon, a superhero, a transient evil-doer, and the open range a producer can grind out endless episodes at a price that yields higher profits than more popular programs incurring greater production costs. Many shows high in violent content are retained [ emphasis added ] because they are financially attractive to the industry even though they draw smaller audiences than programs that do not feature violent action. […] Those who create the programs acknowledge quite candidly that conflict is essential for engrossing drama and physical violence is the easiest and intellectually non-demanding way of depicting it. As one producer put it: In dramatising conflict on television, man against nature is too expensive, man against God is too intellectual, man against himself is too psychological and leaves little opportunity for action, so man against man is what one usually ends up with. […] Just as aggression is not rooted in the individual, neither does its control reside solely there. Humaneness requires, in addition to benevolent codes of self-reinforcement, social reinforcement systems that continuously uphold compassionate behaviour and discourage cruelty. Societies must create more effective organisational safeguards that function as restraining influences in the use of institutional power for exploitative or destructive ends."

Albert Bandura in 'Agression, a social learning analysis', page 219, 220, 221. First published in 1973 by Prentice-Hall, Inc., USA

Motivation x effort = progress

Kennemer Dunes national park and beach, "muddy" today. Every step requires effort [ effort transcends motivation ]

Min/max temperature: -2°C/0°C; humidity: 92%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1028 hPa; wind from East 19.3 km/h; visibility: 5.0 kilometres; Clouds overcast 304 m.

"I like my screen well used, with every corner filled, but no arty theories clamping the action down. Nowadays I want the cutting [ film-editing ] and continuity to be as inconspicuous as possible, and all I am concerned with is to get the characters developed and the story clearly told without any directorial idiosyncrasies. [W]e are making Motion Pictures. Too many forget that. A film has got to be ocularly interesting and above all it is the picture which is the thing. I try to tell my story so much so in pictures that if by any chance the sound apparatus broke down in the cinema, the audience would not fret and get restless because the pictorial action would still hold them! Sound is all right in its place, but it is a silent picture training which counts today. Naval men have a theory that the finest navigators nowadays are the men who learnt their craft in the out-of-date sailing ships […] I am told that the talking picture has a bigger range of subjects, I argue that it also lessens the field of appeal. What appeals to the eye is universal; what appeals to the ear is local. […] I like to keep the public guessing [… I built up my interest gradually and surely and, in thrillers, bring it to a crescendo. […] it is […] knowing your script by heart. […] I have to remember that, whereas I know the story backwards, the audience has got to absorb it gradually. […] My artists, too, must behave as human beings. [ Glamour ] has nothing to do with reality and I maintain that reality is the most important factor in making a successful film. […] Next to reality, I put […] comedy [ it ] makes a film more dramatic. […] A stage play gives you intermissions for reflections on each act. These intermissions have to be supplied in a film by contrast and, if a film is dramatic or tragic, the obvious contrast is comedy. [ I ] try to supply a definite contrast. I take a dramatic situation up and to its peak of excitement and then, before it has time to start the downward curve, I introduce comedy to relieve the tension. […] I am out to give the public good, healthy, mental shake-ups. Civilisation has become so screening and sheltering that we cannot experience sufficient thrills at first hand. Therefore, to prevent our becoming sluggish and jellied, we have to experience them artificially […] But it must be pictures first and last. A little sound certainly, but only when the story offers a perfectly natural opportunity for it."

Alfred Hitchcock in 'Close Your Eyes and Visualize!', originally published in 'The Stage', July 1936, reprinted in 'Hitchcock on Hitchcock, Selected Writings and Interviews', page 247, 249, edited by Sidney Gottlieb, first published by Faber and Faber in Great Britain in 1995

"The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself."

Ernest Hemingway as quoted by Arnold Samuelson, page 11 in 'A Year in Key West and Cuba', published in October 1984 by Random House Inc. 

"Flowers growing on a hill
Dragonflies and daffodils
Learn from us very much
Look at us but do not touch"

'Some Velvet Morning', performed by Primal Scream & Kate Moss, first released in November 2003 trough Columbia Records in the UK, music video directed by Dawn Shadforth

Training/today_steady_wind_south_fresh_clear_sunny/30K

Above: Footprint_while_cooling_down_under_the_Duin_and_Kruidberg_trees,_after_todays_training. 

The way of the blood

Haarlem, today. Flow [ focus ]

Above: Four days after surgery (EVLT: Endovenous laser treatment) there already is improvement in the treated varicose vains-condion (compared too what, you may ask? True, nothing to compare it with, you will not find one post-training-picture -- PGIA -- without long-trousers on this website -- too anxious to show that, I was). Though, under the knee and above the ankle varicose veins are still visible -- it can take up to 6 months to finally disappear -- 4 days after surgery there already is -- apart from the tension/pain relief -- also visual improvement. Visible is the vain in the upper part of the leg (on the shadow-line). Initially a thick, snake-like tube, laying like the root of a three sometimes surfaces trough a road cracking the asphalt, appearing from underneath the skin -- now looking more like a scar. Right beneath the knee brushes have shown up, caused by the operation. Both the 'doable' experience of the operation itself and the results, make the treatment (EVLT) -- when 'suffering' from the disadvantages of varicose veins and the potential risks that come with them -- a highly recommended undertaking. Despite -- or even better: just because -- all the horror stories people will find when searching the internet (it seems the whiners have a monopoly on populating all the -- medical -- fora, complaining about just anything). Love, trust and make friendship. Overcome anxietygo where the fear is, learn to feel at ease.  (topic to be continued)

Min/max temperature: 9°C/18°C; humidity: 64%; precipitation: 0 mm; sea level pressure: 1020.88 hPa; wind: North 9 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds: Few 914 m .; Moon: Waning Gibbous, 89% visible

During the operation I enjoyed a pleasant conversation with both the surgeon and the well-educated nurse. I asked the surgeon whether he was -- and if so -- where his fascination for vascular surgery came from:

"Yes. If you know the way of the blood, you know where to find everything inside the human body."

Dr. A. Rijbroek, surgeon, personal communication during EVL treatment in Haarlem, 10 May 2017

"The meaning of emptiness is space where there is nothing, and I also envisage emptiness as that which cannot be known. Emptiness, of course, is where there is nothing. Knowing that which does not exist while knowing that which exists -- that is emptiness… He should know that true empty space is there where the clouds of uncertainty have completely dissipated… Think of the void as the way and see the way as the void. In emptiness the good exists and evil does not exist. Knowing exists, the principle exists, the way exists, and the mind -- is void.

Miyamoto Musashi in Kenji Tokitsu's 'Miyamoto Musashi. His Life and Writing', page 328, first published in 2000 by Editions Desiris in France

SAR_along_the_way_prologue

Above: Footprint after 32K SAR training

"You smell like a passing garbage truck" Quoted: son Melle on the condition of my Aegon/Ajax trainings-shirt.

Time for a new T-shirt.

And a new series of posts: dedicated to the core of training on South Kennemerland and Velsen's dune-trails and beach-scape's.