The building we live in. The building in which we live.

The empty lot I walk by. The empty lot by which I walk.

Man, those prepositions will get you every time.

I’m reading Bataille right now for my philosophy class, and he’s making me second-guess my language - I’m always realizing that everything I say is mostly inadequate, so playing by arbitrary rules (like “never end a sentence with a preposition” [which is actually a Latin rule, and usually doesn’t or can’t apply to English]) sometimes helps establish a illusory structure.

I guess that’s also why I take photographs.

I know, I know. It’s the 6th of November and we already have a tree. (And who knew you could get Christmas trees at Urban Outfitters?)

At least it’s silver and shiny. In my book, that means it can stay up all year. Tessa’s not a huge fan of Christmas lights, while I absolutely love them - so the shine of this tree is a good compromise.

So, John has pointed out celebrity analogues to famous photographers. In response, I present the personal websites of Matthew Brady, Robert Frank, and Robert Adams.

After nearly two months of not running, I started again. When I first moved here, I had no problem with it - I was more or less on my old schedule - about 3.5 miles every other day. Then it dropped to twice a week. Then it dropped altogether.

There are things about running in Brooklyn - it’s dirty, there’s a lot of dog poop on the sidewalk, the smog, the crazy drivers - that are not very fun, and they got to me - made me dislike everything I love about running.

However, I started to have dreams about it - not like those dreams where you’re running but it’s never fast enough and you feel helpless, but dreams where I would plan a route, get excited about it, and then actually run.

Last Sunday, I got sick of not running, and tried my orginal Brooklyn route: a 3.3 mile loop from home, by Pratt, and around Ft. Washington park. It felt great to be back outside doing something other than walking or riding my bike to school. It’s so… purposeless - I’m not trying to get anywhere, really - just trying to get.

My legs got pretty sore - like they did when I first started running last December - and I had to rest them until today. I went out again this afternoon - it’s been gorgeous here (67 degrees F today!) - and started on the first part of my usual loop. But by the time I got to Ft. Washington park, I was more engergized than when I had started, and so I decided to tackle one of the bridges into Manhattan. I chose the Manhattan bridge because that’s the first sign I saw, and made it over and then back home (almost exactly 7 miles) in 01:03:47 (that’s a little over 8.5 minutes per mile, which isn’t bad for me considering I walked a couple of minutes here and there and had to wait for traffic a few times).

I’m pretty pleased with myself - it’s a new personal best for length (by almost 3/4 of a mile) - and it was incredibly rewarding to be on the Manhattan bridge to see the sun set.

I know I lapse into this corny self-congratulatory nonsense when I write about running (which I haven’t actually done for a while) - but I can’t help it! It’s the same way I feel when I’ve had a really good day photographing: excited about what I’ve done, but even more excited to do it again.