IN ONE OF HER PREVIOUS LIVES, KAIDIE WAS DESYPHUS, SWIMMING ROUND AND ROUND THE CIRCLE LINE IN SINGAPORE. The Bras Basah Station permanent public art work post #1.
* Read about Bras Basah Station on Wikipedia.
* Read about the Circle Line on the Land Transport Authority site.
* Read about the Circle Line on Wikipedia.
* More information and images of the Circle Line here and there.
* Read about award-winning station designed by critically-acclaimed WOHA.
* Look up images of Bras Basah Station on Flickr.
** LAST 2 DAYS OF THIS MONTH TO VOTE! Currently a top film in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
SOMEONE IS BRIBING KAIDIE WITH £2.50 FOR EVERY KM SHE RUNS (or crawls)!! SPONSOR KAIDIE IN HER FIRST LIFE 1.0 MARATHON and WE MIGHT DEVOTE AN ENTIRE POST FOR YOU! (Yes we are that mercenary) #2
Chin Hwee Tan has offered to donate £2.50 to the Rotary Charities for every kilometre we complete at the Farnham Pilgrim Marathon! This means that on average we will earn £2.50 for every 5 minutes 30 seconds we run; in another words, 45.45454545 pence every 60 seconds, as we plant (AND REMOVE) one foot in front of the other. Over the course of 42km, we will collect a grand total of £105 from Chin Hwee!! (On race day however, the money will come much, much harder to earn, for we will be running offroad. Having been spoilt park and pavement runners, running on uneven ground will slow us down drastically. We have been nursing a shin splint and tendonitis, but we continue practising as we speak. So far, we have run up to 30km for 4 times. The next challenge is to go up to 35-42km, although monotony and physical exhaustion is what we are teaching ourselves to fight…) THANK YOU very much Chin Hwee! (This is not the first time Chin Hwee is contributing to Kaidie’s effort – he had previously sponsored our 10km run for the Medecins Sans Frontieres!)
CONTEXT:
As you know (YOU DO, AND YOU DID, AND I KNOW THAT YOU DO AND DID, ALL 700 OF UNIQUE YOU-s WHO CLICK ON THIS SITE DAILY! NOW IS THE TIME TO COME FORWARD AND BE COUNTED, SO THAT WE CAN PUT A FACE TO YOUR NUMBER!!!), we are running our first ever Life 1.0 marathon on the historical Pilgrim’s Route, in the Farnham Pilgrim’s Marathon in Surrey, in 3 weeks. We have begun training in the past 4 months. We decide that while/since we are at it, we wish to make it worthwhile for others as well. We wish to raise money for the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice and other Rotary charities. We are now aiming for around £200. It goes without saying that we would appreciate any amount. Having said that, it is certainly fine too if you decide to splash out £100, £1000 or more at a go. Please, do not be shy – if you can, please do (re-)distribute your wealth! In return, we will thank you in this blog (and the evil Facebook, and Twitter, etc) should you make a donation! We will also put in extra effort in our training, to make sure that we finish the race, and finish it in not too indecent a time. Currently, we have collected approximately £140. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, CHIN HWEE, GREG and JAMES! Over the weekend, our ex-kidnapper, The Good Pirate, aka Chutha Indigo, aka Chuthatip Achavasmit has also made a nice donation! – her second since our Medecins Sans Frontieres effort! THANK YOU CHUTHA!!
HOW TO DONATE:
Note that if you are a UK taxpayer, every £1 you donate will be made up to £1.25 by H. M. Revenue and Customs!! Unfortunately, there is no online button to click donate for this run. Hence, if you are keen to make a donation, please contact us now <dislocation@3rdlifekaidie.com>. What we could do is to collate the monies and pay the organisers (IF YOU TRUST US?). In this case, we will tell you how you can pay us (hard cash, electronic bank transfer or cheque). Being such accountable and highly responsible beings that we are, we will publish the filled-up form shown above (but with your personal details protected, of course, if you wish), after we have confirmed the amounts we are receiving. Alternatively, you can draw out a cheque payable to: ‘The Rotary Club of Farnham Weyside’ directly, and let us know. Whichever method fits you. NO EXCUSES NOW, my dear Readers!
NEXT UPDATES:
Look out for the next posts with updates about the Farnham Pilgrim’s Marathon. In the next weeks leading up to race day, we will be supplying details about our fundraising effort and progress (or REGRESS, as it resembles currently…) The 42km is part of the pilgrim’s route! Which is one of the reasons we have chosen this for our first ever Life 1.0 marathon. We will be arriving a day before the race, to walk a small part of the route, to get ourselves familiarised (this is also our first time in Surrey!). As a nod to Chaucer’s wonderful Canterbury Tales, we are sewing our donkey costume and braying each time we our shin screams.
Our 3rd and 4th 30km runs in yellow- at our usual Regents Fark, and Hyde Fark. If you are keen, you could run with us – in the mirror-image of the purple path. We might run into each other at approximately one single point, around Great Portland Street tube station. See you sooner / later. We are th one with a lousy painful gait. Go on, laugh at us, but throw us some money first.
** Currently one of the top competing films in the War of Films contest with 110 votes: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. **Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
BLACKED OUT ENDS THIS SATURDAY! MISS AND LIVE TO REGRET.
Thank you for coming to the opening of Blacked Out last Thursday! NE7, a sound artist, performed for the evening. This is a group show that we are participating, curated by curator-educator-artist Jennifer Hankin, who is pictured here placing LED-lit balloons at the entrance with fellow exhibiting artist, Lisa Metherell. Thank you Jennifer, Mr Hankin, Faye, and all other artists for the exhibition!
To complement the ‘underground’ theme of the show – given that it takes place in an arch – we shared a work that features a character from a parallel life, ‘Desyphus’, underwater. Is she sinking? Is she afloat? Is she caught in a conundrum, as it were, in time and space in a 3-minute digital loop? This work is an edited extract of a chapter from a 29-chapter large-scale permanent projection in the Bras Basah subway station, located in the centre of the Arts and Heritage District in Singapore, commissioned by the Land Transport Authority of Singapore. We will be talking more about this work in the weeks to come.
Do come and catch this and works by 8 other artists at Blacked Out! Hurry, for it ends this Saturday.
** Currently one of the top competing films in the War of Films contest with 100 votes: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. **Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
HITS & MISSES, FITS & KISSES: Let’s agree not to run into each other, but won’t you let us take us for a ride? GAME FOR A COLLABORATION WITH US ON OUR EPIC QUIXOTIC QUEST?
The trans-dimensional runner of this quixotic life has at any one time one foot on the ground, pragmatic/rational/grounded in sturdily hardcore realism, and the other airborne, in cuckoo land and blue skies, with extra-terrestrial visionary eyes on each (swollen) toe, taken with skyscraper-tall mountains of heartattacky salt.
In this Web 2.0 Do-It-With-Others storytelling exercise, we have been privileged to have undertaken several collaborations with you, in our quest for the Meaning of Life 3.0. Here is an other idea for a collaboration (first conceived in early 2010):
As it is, we have not met 99.782 per cent of you, given that our interaction has been only in Life 2.0, ie, via the channels of this running blog, Facebook, Youtube, GPSies, Twitter and so on – and our imagination, of course. Also, given that we are partly an imaginary creation, meeting in real life is possibly an unimaginable task. (That said, we do not think that encounter in one dimension is of lesser or more significance than an other) In this idea of a project, to make the point that we want to maintain or create a critical distance between us, let us go out of our way to deliberately not meet in Life 1.0. The way to go about doing this is that one person shares her routine over a prescribed period of time. The other person – let us call them the/an ‘anti-stalker’ – will journey on the same route, but intentionally missing the previous person, by a few minutes/moments/metres/centimetres.
The thrill/beauty/cruelty/point of the game is to come so very close to have nearly met – but to just stop short of actually encountering the other. Afterwards, the pair could compare their GPS tracks and find out and plot, point by point, by exactly how much they have missed each other. (And of course, this sharing can be done remotely). As a consequence, one or both parties can derive (perverse / poetic) pleasure from the fact that they could theoretically have been in the same time and space, and could have had an encounter, but willfully and precisely do not. The deliberate orchestration of a denial of a run-in is the point of this project. Hence, we will never come face to face and whisper ‘Hi!’, ‘Nice to meet you!’, ‘Nice to meet you again!’, ‘And who are you?’; one may come close enough to catch a whiff of the other, or sneak a peek of the other’s shadow, or catch a dying footprint, but / and that is about it.
The game can be more fun if more participate. An orgy, not of presence, but absence, with participants who are missing – although we will hardly miss one another.
The great thing about this project is that it is of course hardly original, as many of us are already accomplished practitioners in some degree or an other, but, my Dear Conspirators of Pleasure, do you not think that it will be infinitely (more) enjoyable should we make this a studied and planned collaboration/game, with set parameters to play?
So, are you game? (Ah, the wonders of technology, to allow us to indulge, stretch and realise such fantasies…)
** Currently #5 in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
WE REALLY SHOULD GET CHANGED AND GO TO OUR EXHIBITION SITE (which opens in 2 hours!!), BUT WE CAN’T RESIST STEALING A GLANCE AT THIS BOOK.
In a couple of hours, a group show that we are participating in will open. We really should get changed and get our fatar*sses moving to Nondon Bridge. However, we simply cannot resist taking a peek at this new book that we have just ordered through the library. There are 20 other books we are reading / supposed to be reading at the same time, and which take higher priority. In addition, we have been ‘saving’ this book for our tiny little sojourn this weekend out of Nondon (We have been meaning to get out of Nondon, and although now there are 56,000 compelling reasons stop us from taking a break, we are forcing ourselves to do so, and take up one of your suggestions of a day out [THANK YOU!!], but trying to make us feel less guilty by also doing some work while we play).
Once we landed our hands on Running and Philosophy – A Marathon For The Mind (ed. Michael W Austin 2007, Blackwell Publishing Ltd), we wanted to read it all at a go. This is a collection of writings about the relationship between running and philosophy, by philosophers who run. (YES THEY EXIST. AGAIN, FOR THOSE OF YOU FLABBY ACADEMIC SNOBS WHO RUBBISH RUNNING AS UNTHINKING AND SAY WALKING IS MORE CONTEMPLATIVE, POETIC ETC ETC – wait till you read this book – and indeed OUR BOOK, later. Sooner. Some day. Just you wait, fatty). And as transient beings ourselves (with 750 days left on our life/death sentence) we know only too well about seizing the moment, enjoying the pleasures of pleasure while it lasts, etc etc. However, we also tried to delay this, with the reasoning (we are rational beings as well, you know) that a prolongation/holding back/delay of a pleasure will increase it infinitely, when it does come (also simply due to the accentuation of the pain of waiting/longing/desiring).
Ah, the chaosmos of pain vs pleasure. As usual. Just now, we cheated a little. (Ah, the chaosmos reason vs desire. As usual). We plunged into the middle (as usual, rather than from the beginning – linearity is not the non-linear trans-dimensional runner‘s cup of tea), and read snippets here and there. And there and there. And a bit more there, and over there there, too.
It is assuring a glance (or a few glances) – we have been writing a good, usable 18,000 words in the past 2 months (and 100,000 more that may never ever see any light – and we are not talking about writing from this amazing travel blog). It is useful at this point to read something that articulates what we have been saying or meaning to say (for reasons including that of copyright, we are not able to share with you that other kind of -equally if not more brilliant – writing of ours, at this point, though we would, later) .
Also, our running for the week has been rather rubbish, due to pain in the knee, the tendon… -something or other area, and a burning sensation on our feet, and general pain in the ar*e, real, imagined, or rhetorical. Reading about the running philosophers who talk about pain reminds us to stop being sissies and get moving.
And get moving out of our flat in Kings Kross, towards Nondon Bridge too. See you in a couple of hours. (And don’t worry, we will erase the pencil marks we have made in the books when we are done – and they will remain good as new.) (And more on the book later – after we read it in Non-Nondon this weekend.)
** Currently #5 in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
WANNA APPEAR ON THIS AMAZING BLOG? COME TO THE PRIVATE VIEW of BLACKED OUT, THURSDAY 19 AUGUST 18:30 onwards. LIVE MUSIC, WINE – AND GREAT ART, OF COURSE. KAIDIE WILL SHOOT YOU!
Curated by artist-curator-educator Jennifer Hankin, Blacked Out is an exhibition in which 9 artists explore light in a blacked out urban setting. This group show is held at Arch 897, Holyrood St, Nondon SE1 2EL. The show opens this Thursday, and lasts for the next few days.
We will share a video loop, its Nondon/ London premiere. In a parallel world, Kaidie is ‘Desyphus’ (Sisyphus + Decipher), riding infinitely in the Circle Line in an island. This clip, filmed by professional diver William Ong, is a edited variation of a chapter from the 29-chapter The Amazing Neverending Underwater Adventures!, a large-scale permanent video installation in the Bras Basah Station, commissioned by the Land Transport Authority in Singapore. The music is composed by Philip Tan.
As usual, we will be there with the memory trapper of a camera. So please remember to say and smell of cheese. Please self-invite. Bring friends – if you have any. If you haven’t, employ some. Otherwise, bring your partner, husband, boyfriend, wife, girlfriend, lover, lovers, ex-lovers, concurrent lovers, children, grandchildren, cousins, nephews, nieces, grand nieces, longlost grand nephews, father, mother, father and mother-like figures in your life, stepparents, foster parents, step sister, distant brother, halfdaughter, pets, etc, and claim that they are your mates. We will be busy snapping amazing shots away, and publish the more amazing ones on this amazing blog over the weekend. So if you wish to have the gratification of seeing yourself appear on this amazing blog, COME! We look forward to running into you.
** Currently #5 in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
WITH 755 DAYS LEFT ON OUR LIFE (or DEATH) SENTENCE (until the last day of the Nondon Olympics on 09.09.2012), HERE IS AN OTHER MINDMAP OF/FROM KAIDIE’S SEMBLANCE OF LIFE (3.0).
I trust not premonitions and I fear not omens. I flee / not from slander nor poison. / There is no death. / We are all immortal. All is immortal. Fear not / death at seventeen nor at seventy. / There is only reality and light. / There is neither dark nor death / in this, our world. / We have reached the beach and I / am one of those who pull the nets in when / immortality arrives in batches. Live / in a house and it will not crumble. I will summon / a century at will, enter / and build my house in it. That is why / your children and your wives all share my board, the table / serving forefather and grandson: the future is decided now.
As read by Arseni Tarkovsky in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror, 1975
** Currently #5 in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
TRANS-DIMENSIONAL RUNNING FOR OUR LIVES! A ROUGH GUIDE: IN THE CHAOSMOS OF OUTSIDE/IN. Or: Why running is an excellent tactic for the urban dweller.
** Breaking news: Currently #5 in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
As we ran about in our neighbourhood on voting day May 2010, we found something found, and not lost. For a change. But perhaps she was unwanted, as it had been more than 2 weeks. Or perhaps she was the one who decided to leave, to have a new place to dwell.
In the physical, primary world of Life 1.0[1], running as a means of navigating the urban landscape has the clear advantage of not increasing our carbon footprints. While this single reason should be compelling enough to persuade the uninitiated, there are several more reasons – philosophical, poetic, psychogeographical, personal and political – why running is an excellent tactic for the urban dweller.
When we run in the city, we are able to personalise what could otherwise be an anonymous, alienating and brutal landscape. While located as an extension of the long traditions of walking (Benjamin, Debord, Richard Long, Lake District writers, Herzog et al), reality becomes more heightened for the runner (with the increased heart rate, speed, physical duress et al given the high impact activity). As an everyday (and legitimate and safe) activity, running departs from other urban tactics such as parkour, skateboarding and grafitti.
We can outrun our fears and danger when we run in the city. We could allow ourselves to be intimidated by the oppressive Barbican buildings and its heavily concrete surroundings, or, we could find our own ways around it, by running it. Running through a council estate in Peckham enables us to conquer our insecurities and paranoia, real, imagined or simply rumoured. If we have no physical advantage over another person (especially if one armed with a weapon, a hoody and ugly tracksuits, a fighter dog or ill-intent), like the Kalahari endurance hunter, we understand that we have our tenacity to rely on, that will allow us to outrun any potential matters of life and death.
Let all the 10,000[2] CCTVs in London follow our movements, for we will register as nothing more than blurs, as if in a Marinetti painting. Haussmann built broad boulevards that were not only beautiful for the flaneur (including those on hashish) to stroll on, but easier for Napoleon’s troops to run down delinquent Parisiens. We could theoretically outwit that, by running through it, as Lola did Berlin, not once but thrice, in Lola Rennt (Tom Twyer, 1998). (Indeed, Lola not only made us see different faces of Berlin, she overcame her useless lover’s problems and overturned her own fate). In precisely-built concrete jungles, the runner can find small ways to defy grand narratives, by running and discovering unknown alleyways and pockets of areas that are neglected. For tightly controlled cities that have been infamously described as having chaos is that is ‘authored’ or absurdity that is ‘willed’, running is a gesture that we can adopt as a comeback (also to the one who described it as such). If we have nowhere to run to, or to run away from, we can discover new spaces within a difficult system, to run. This is one way to ‘not let the bastards grind us down’, as the angry young Arthur reminds us in Sillitoe’s other Kitchen Sink classic, Saturday Night Sunday Morning.
Running also offers a refreshing filter for us to explore a foreign city. When we run in a new city, we interpret landmarks in ways that differ from the overexposed versions pushed forward by tourist books and postcards. Being literally and metaphorically on the ground, we can also run into places – including those that are filled with chaos and absurdity – that would otherwise be whitewashed from the glossy official or so-called authoritative versions. Exposure to the unedited and un-Photoshopped places can open our eyes, ears and minds to other, perhaps more meaningful micro-narratives than the overarching ones.
As runners, we also cease to be taken as ignorant foreigners or exotic Others who are vulnerable, helpless or simply irritating (although we now irritate in other ways, by for instance, ‘endangering the lives of other [slow] users of the pavement’, and so on). While we have previously seen how remains vital to assume the ideological position of an outsider, it is also strategic to look like a local every now and then. Other tourists or even locals ask us for directions, as if the runner has a greater authority on the given site. Indeed, we do.
Virtually anyone can run anytime, anywhere. While it remains unfathomable how the ‘female species’ are still viewed as ‘the weaker sex’ in the 21st century (this is a separate discussion that warrants another 2010,000 theses, and more, but not this one), running is a method in which the female urban dweller could subvert this tiresome outlook. While the female runner is still likely to be spectated upon, she is soon gone, away from any actual bullying that might have befallen someone in a slower mode of navigation. In return, we can enjoy a few moments of tokenistic reciprocations of taunts (after all, we have been at the receiving end from the beginning of time, since having allegedly been created from some spare rib, according to one best-selling storybook), by deliberately making eye contact with the male spectators, but swiftly sprinting off, as if saying ‘catch me if you can’. They do not, and / because they cannot, and they know it only too well. Hence, the look of impotence. A female runner navigating the big city alone can be a sign of physical and mental strength and confidence, thereby warding off any unwanted attention. Or, perhaps it is the face of intense concentration, or simply the excessive (and offensive) perspiration (and animalistic panting) of the serious female runner that desexualises her for the male spectator.
One female, foreign urban-dwelling runner is always warming up. Left: June 2010. Middle: April 2010. Right: May 2010, with our Garmin Forerunner 405 with a broken strap (due to our excessive perspiration, perhaps), here seen taped down to our wrist. We try to use brown tape instead of say, black gaffer tape, for aesthetic purposes as the former can blend in with the colour of our skin. You could not have seen the tape had we not pointed it out, could you?
Running in the city, we produce our own desire paths that subvert tracks laid out for us by the city planners. Should we have a Global Positioning System (GPS) device, we are also able to literally draw our own desire paths. In this way, we create our own unique marks in the midst of the concrete jungle. Akin to the graffiti artist’s surreptitious insignias on walls or trains (or the dog’s trail of urination in the streets), GPS drawing allow us to register our place and existence in the urban landscape. These new tracks, and indeed maps, can be shared with the online community on GPS-sharing sites[4], and further modified collaboratively[5]. From these, further mashups can be created. Like the Situationist tactic of deliberately reading a map upside down, the trans-dimensional runner can appropriate the mashups in innovative ways. In this manner, a lively Life 1.0-Life 2.0-Life 3.0 translation process is generated, all in turn allowing us to return to explore, question and understand our relationship with the city, and indeed, the builders of the city.
The glories of GPS aside, running in a city that we are unfamiliar with without a map can be liberating. Even in a city that we think we know, running without a map can open our eyes, ears and minds in new ways. In an age in which every frontier has been marked, mapped and fully known, such are small ways in which we can re-imagine and re-assess the environment that we live in, as well as its dwellers, including ourselves.
Running in the city, we can run away without physically away. Our minds travel while we remain fully embedded in the urban din. That it is neither illegal (as graffiti is), esoteric (as tai-chi is), extreme (as base jumping is, in which people jump off skyscrapers), technically-complex (as parkour is) or requiring special equipment (as nordic walking does), is the forte of running. Running is so simple as to be banal. While the likes of Roger Deakin, Byron and Martin Amis have made the activity of wild swimming sound lyrical, that it necessarily takes place outside the city, in somewhere unchartered and, indeed, wild, makes it escapist. With running, we can remain fully within a / the system. The ability to conform to a system while playfully questioning it, is an important point of the tactic of trans-dimensional running. Rather than to deny the city or reject reality, running allows us to opt in and play by the rules of the games, while slyly overturning them in personal but powerful ways. Running allows us to take ownership of a place that can be otherwise intimidating and prohibitive. By running, we see the city unpack itself in new ways that in turn also open us up.
Kaidie's desire paths for the month of May 2010.
This is an edited extract from a chapter. Where on googleearth does Kaidie do her writing (and some thinking)? Where is the place in Nondon that inspires us to generate such mindblowing, worldchanging, teethbearing words of wisdom?? To find out, read the next post!
[1] The various lives have been defined in the following ways in this thesis (as of 10 August 2010): Life 1.0 refers to the primary, physical world, ‘reality as it is’. Life 2.0 refers to the realm of imagination, ‘reality as I like’, as well as realities made possible by Web 2.0. Life 3.0 points to our current hybrid, mixed and augmented realities made possible by Web 3.0. Life 4.0 refers to ‘Web 4.0? and other future technologically-enabled realities, as well as other cycles of our lives to come, in the form of transmigration.
[2] Justin Davenport, ‘Tens of thousands of CCTV cameras, yet 80% of crime unsolved | News’, London Evening Standard, 19 September 2007 [accessed 9 August 2010].
NONDON ON THE RUN: SUMMER 2010 #1. NORTH BY NORTHWEST, AND SOUTHEAST, AND SO ON. 25 July – 1 August.
** Breaking news: Currently #6 in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of screen. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
Restlessness is a stubborn dis-ease of ours , but if there is any season that makes one itch more than usual, it has to be Summer. As we crave for a respite from our beloved Nondon , even our loyalty for our dearest Regents Fark is wonky. The comfort of familiarity becomes repulsive. Also, only running at our favourite fark shields us from other textures, tastes and terrains.
In our continuing effort to train for our first marathon in September, as well as to find means to run away from Nondon without physically being able to do that just yet, we have been using running to explore different parts of Nondon, to see Nondon in new ways that we would not have had. And as temporary respites – quickies, if you will. In these runs, we work on distance and terrain, and put speed aside, especially since we often have to stop several times to ask for directions, or stop to read one of those map boards (or whatever they may be called?) installed in the streets. This being Summer, we plan some of our runs heading towards lidos, and have a dip as well.
We made several trips last week, in all directions. On 25 July Sunday, we ran 20.01km along the canal heading westwards. On Monday, we did 9.01km at our usual Regents Fark. On Tuesday, we walked 13.39km South, to the London Bridge area, to survey the space that we will exhibit in a couple of weeks. On Wednesday, we went North, running 24.06km to the rather ravishing Hampstead Heath, including a freaking %$£££^%X# freezing 1.1km swim at the Parliament Pill lido. On Friday, we ran our first ever 30km, heading westwards to and from Kew Bridge. On Sunday, we hit the canal again, this time heading towards the exotic east, but missing exactly 98% of Victoria Fark (15km).
How nice, and how different it was, and hence it was nice. We went to places that we would never have imagined to be Nondon, and ran on terrain that were different, difficult. If you would accept the argument that Nondon is generous enough a city to accomodate and indeed celebrate many variations of itself, then the existence of non-Nondons within Nondon, makes complete sense. In the same line of logic, Nondon, ie Non-London, is completely London at the same time. In Kaidie’s cosmology of the world, that ‘A’ co-exists with not-‘A’ – and often in the same freaking %$£££^%X# space – is perfectly logical. There is (some times frustratingly) no conflict.
‘Fresh sensations, new emotions, are valuable. Can we experience this in everyday life, without endless novelty, which in itself becomes pointless? […] We need that freedom’, as Jeanette Winterson says. ‘Life is too short to save for the holidays’. Indeed.
Serpentine Lido and Hampstead pond, here we come next. [Perhaps even Richmond and Tooting Bec, but we will have to budget getting there (on foot), getting back here (on foot), and having a dip (as aromatic slices of duck sandwiched in slim slices of pancake) as well. Would we have enough energy? …] We need to plan another 5 sessions of long runs, of 30-37km each, and 1 session of 42km. Would you, my Dear Conspirators of Pleasure, have any recommendation of which way we could possibly head next? Some where not too polluted. Somewhere fresh. Somewhere that would excite us. And you, of course.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE A DONATION TOWARDS KAIDIE’S RUN FOR THE ROTARY CHARITIES? KAIDIE’S 1st LIFE1.0 MARATHON #1
** HOT OFF THE microwave OVEN: As of 8 August, 1) CHIN HWEE TAN, 2) GREGORY BEITCHMAN and 3) JAMES ODLING SMEE have offered to make a contribution! With these financial and emotional blackmails, the pressure/pleasure is on... ... Chin Hwee's offer is particularly good, so we will devote AN ENTIRE POST on it!! Look out for it in the next couple of days! IF YOU MAKE A DONATION, AND ESPECIALLY IF YOU DONATION IS *INTERESTING*, WE *MIGHT* DEVOTE AN ENTIRE POST JUST FOR YOU!!! So hurry! (That's KAIDIE'S BLACKMAIL for you.)**
As we mentioned, we are running our first ever Life 1.0 marathon on the historical Pilgrim’s Route, in the Farnham Pilgrim’s Marathon in Surrey, in 7 weeks. Do you think we are terribly excited, or do you think we are excitably terrible?!
While/since we are at it, we wish to make it worthwhile for others as well. We wish to raise money for the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice and other Rotary charities. If you are keen to make a donation, please contact Kaidie now <dislocation@3rdlifekaidie.com>! We are aiming for £100-£200. It goes without saying that we would appreciate any amount. £10 is fine but so is £1, $1, 1 euro, 100yen, or other currencies in other denominations. Please do help, if you could! Yes yes, we do understand and agree with what the sweaty Slavoj is saying, but please do your bit in redistributing (your) wealth. CONTACT KAIDIE NOW!
Kaidie ran 30km to and from Kew Bridge as part of our training for our first ever 42km race. We carried our hand-and-toe-drawn map in our waist pouch, and consulted it every now and then during the course. It would not surprise you/us for us to confess that we were still lost a few times, and had to ask about 7 people along the way for directions, including a motorbike courier outside a kebab shop, who said that he could not help me. 'And you call yourself a courier?!' I shouted. 'It's lunch time now, love!' he shouted back. 'What a pedantic prick.' I replied (not). I would have been better off asking an old lady on a stairlift. This map has been sketched on what used to be the boarding pass of a budget airlines. Make a guess which.
In return, we will thank you in this blog (and the evil Facebook, and Twitter, etc) should you make a donation! We will also put in extra effort in our training, to make sure that we finish the race, and finish it in not too indecent a time. For the past 12 weeks, we have been devoting several hours each week to running (scoff not, for if you had legs the length of ours, you would take that long, too). As we hit 30km last Friday, we are increasingly confident that we will be able to finish the 42km race. However, as for the number of hours we have to spend on the road, we are extremely uncertain, for we are reminded that the Farnham route will be hilly and uneven! Having been a spoilt pavement/tarmac runner, it is very likely that our timing will be increased significantly! We must practice more, on varying terrain!
Follow our training ‘live’! Have a look at our running routes! Suggest others! 24-30km required much mental coaxing and physical effort. We imagine the next laps of training – 30-35km – to be even more trying. So, if you run in Life 1.0 as well, you can help push our fatarses and soggy brains along by running with us, for some parts of our practice sessions!
It would have been all too easy for one to simply let one’s imagination run wild and create a purely fantastical story. What is vital in Kaidie’s endeavour is the emphasis on the Life 1.0 realism as well. We have taken upon ourselves to pick up running in real life, and as a test of this, the task of completing a marathon. In this way, we are learning and experiencing in first hand what we are selling, by conditioning and teaching our body, mind, and spirit – if we have any?? – to run.
Look out for the next posts with updates about Kaidie’s first life 1.0 marathon. In the next weeks leading up to race day, we will be supplying details about Kaidie’s fundraising effort, training development, as well as her plans for her run – Kaidie could run dressed up as a monk (thank you Duncan for your suggestion!), nun or donkey (afterall we are of the same colour and shape and voice) from Chaucer’s wonderful Canterbury Tales, but we will have to watch the erratic bowel movement if the latter (unless of course, we do an impromptu Paula Radcliffe).
Left: screenshot from Farnham Pilgrim's Marathon website. Right: Some of Kaidie's tweets in the past 12 weeks of her training.
** IN THE MONTH OF AUGUST, do continue to watch and vote for the 2 films by Claudia Tomaz about Kaidie! Episode 1 (12 minutes): Kaidie talks about her endeavour. WATCH AND VOTE for KAIDIE AND THE MEANING OF LIFE 3.0 NOW! Episode 2 (10 minutes): focuses on Kaidie’s running. WATCH AND VOTE for RUN KAIDIE RUN NOW! **
CLOUD 9’S AND KAIDIE’S (OVERLAPPING) TRAVELOGUES
CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S TRAVELOGUE
On 15 June, Kaidie walked to Great Eastern Street to attend Bring Your Own Shorts I, organised by Christopher Birdman Dent, and had the privilege of watching filmmaker/artist/activist/writer/DJ/performance artist Claudia Tomaz’s poetically-layered film Travelogue (2008) in its entirety – sitting right next to the filmmaker! Travelogue is a beautiful 12-minute film-poem. In the place of dialogue, this is an intricate conversation, a delicate dance, between sound and images. Filmed by the filmmaker on seductive Super 8 as she journeyed from Portugal to Morocco, the film is a spellbinding. One of the most enchanting passages of the film is that of a montage of faces; the camera -and us- come face to face with the people, sometimes lingering on, other times looking away. (At this point, we think of great filmic moments that haunt: Chris Marker’s opening and closing sequences of Sans Soleil with 3 children on a road in Iceland; when the tiger speaks to the soldier in Apichatpong’s Tropical Malady, the opening dream sequence of Wild Strawberries and when fire fights rain in Mirror.)
My Dear Readers, do read about the film and watch and vote for it!
Left: frame grab from Claudia Tomaz's Travelogue, 2008. Right: Kaidie's travelogue 15 June 2010 from Kings Kross to Old Street.
KAIDIE’S TRAVELOGUE
Although we had promised Claudia to reach there early for a chat, we ended up being quite rudely late! That was because we got rather lost at the Old Street roundabout. Kaidie has a love-hate relationship with roundabouts, as she never fails to get disoriented at one, but we do love their Sisyphian loopiness (as usual). It is not as if we have never been to Great Eastern Street – but perhaps it is that we like getting lost (at the expense of our manners). This GPS track is slightly distorted, as we switched it off before we reached the venue, mistakenly believing that we had ‘arrived’. You can look at this map, and other GPS tracks of Kaidie’s Life 1.0 travels on GPSies.
THE OVERLAPPING TRAVELOGUES OF KAIDIE AND CLAUDIA
Kaidie and Claudia Tomaz first met 5 March 2010 at the Late at Tate Britain’s Game Play, at the Blast Theory booth, but have been meeting frequently in Life 2.0. Multi-hyphenate Claudia has a wide body of works that look at technology, landscape, the city and most of all the people in them, in a manner that is sensitive, spirited and never distancing. Her ‘mutant paintings’, Transient Forms are most tactile. The very giving artist has contributed many times to Kaidie’s running blog, and recently made not one but two films about Kaidie as part of her LONDON GROUND series. In spite of our individual paths/journeys, Claudia and Kaidie always have meeting points that are meaningful and striking. Claudia and Kaidie certainly have many common grounds of interests and have been keen running partners, and will most certainly continue to be. Run Claudia Run!
Do continue to watch and vote for the 2 films by Claudia Tomaz about Kaidie! Episode 1 (12 minutes): Kaidie talks about her endeavour. WATCH AND VOTE for KAIDIE AND THE MEANING OF LIFE 3.0 NOW! Episode 2 (10 minutes): focuses on Kaidie’s running. WATCH AND VOTE for RUN KAIDIE RUN NOW!
