Brennaisance, Born 2 Run & Bestie
Reading time ~8 mins
I have been inconsistent and there’s no excuse for it. I was bored, I didn’t want to write anything for a while. And so I let my emotions ride the waves for a while.
But, what’s yours will eventually find you.
A sudden rush of inspiration to write overtook me. And here I am back again. Making sure I send you something I’d be in awe of and not waste your valuable time.
Here’s something I found really funny but on point:
In today’s issue,
BRENDAN FRASER’s comeback in Aronofsky’s The Whale is tear-jerking and I have A LOT to say.
Excerpts from a book I read that explain how we're the only species born to run and can outlast any other in endurance.
Introducing a friend I adore.
“I need to know that I have done one thing right with my life”
The Whale (2022)
Synopsis: A reclusive, morbidly obese English teacher attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter.
I knew Brendan Fraser from the film George of the Jungle (1997) and it was the first time I had seen a live-action adaptation of something similar to Tarzan when I was probably way too young to understand anything that happens in films except for visual imagery. And after that, I had forgotten about him.
The Whale garnered so much praise and won hearts at film festivals that I had to see what all the fuss was about, from the minutes-long standing ovation for Fraser’s performance to the overwhelmingly positive response from critics worldwide.
Brendan Fraser won my heart with this comeback performance.
The Whale is a film adaption of a play that goes by the same. Director Darren Aronofsky worked with the writer of the play Samuel D. Hunter to create a screenplay. The film has a play-like feel as everything plays out within our main character’s home, especially the living room.
Brendan Fraser's portrayal of an obese human is exceptional. You get to witness how his character got obese in the first place and the difficulties an obese person faces when he navigates everyday life. The character's vulnerability necessitates a careful performance, and Fraser rises to the challenge.
Other than him, Sadie Sink who plays his daughter in the film is an angry teenager who doesn’t care for her father. With limited characters, every character’s arc begins and ends beautifully. Hong Chau plays the kind of friend we could all use in our lives.
The film left me in tears as it came to an end and the audience clapped for the several emotions it invoked within us. As the Brennaisance age sets in, I'm eagerly waiting for Brendan Fraser to grace the silver screen once again.
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
Book by Christopher McDougall
I finished the book and have highlighted a ton of points. Leaving a few which would make sense to you (whether you’re a runner or not, we all are born to run :))
Months later, I’d learn that iskiate is otherwise known as chia fresca— “chillychia.” It’s brewed up by dissolving chia seeds in water with a little sugar and a squirt of lime. In terms of nutritional content, a tablespoon of chia is like a smoothie made from salmon, spinach, and human growth hormone. As tiny as those seeds are, they’re superpacked with omega-3s, omega-6s, protein, calcium, iron, zinc, fiber, and antioxidants. If you had to pick just one desert-island food, you couldn’t do much better than chia, at least if you were interested in building muscle, lowering cholesterol, and reducing your risk of heart disease; after a few months on the chia diet, you could probably swim home.
Besides his Ph.D. and two master’s degrees, Vigil’s pursuit of the lost art of distance running had taken him deep into the Russian outback, high into the mountains of Peru, and far across Kenya’s Rift Valley highlands. He’d wanted to learn why Russian sprinters are forbidden to run a single step in training until they can jump off a twenty-foot ladder in their bare feet, and how sixty-year-old goatherds at Machu Picchu can possibly scale the Andes on a starvation diet of yogurt and herbs, and how Japanese runners trained by Suzuki-san and Koide-san could mysteriously alchemize slow walking into fast marathons. He’d tracked down the old masters and picked their brains, vacuuming up their secrets before they disappeared…
Ultrarunners had no reason to cheat, because they had nothing to gain: no fame, no wealth, no medals. No one knew who they were, or cared who won their strange rambles through the woods. They didn’t even get prize money; all you get for winning an ultra is the same belt buckle as the guy who comes in last.
Sure, plenty of people will throw up excuses about Kenyans having some kind of mutant muscle fiber, but this isn’t about why other people got faster; it’s about why we got slower.
“Let us live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry,” Mark Twain used to say.
…the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it.
Like the Marathon Monks in Japan he’d just been reading about; they ran an ultramarathon every day for seven years, covering some twenty-five thousand miles on nothing but miso soup, tofu, and vegetables. And what about Percy Cerutty, the mad Australian genius who coached some of the greatest milers of all time? Cerutty believed food shouldn’t even be cooked, let alone slaughtered; he put his athletes through triple sessions on a diet of raw oats, fruit, nuts, and cheese. Even Cliff Young, the sixty-three-year-old farmer who stunned Australia in 1983 by beating the best ultrarunners in the country in a 507-mile race from Sydney to Melbourne, did it all on beans, beer, and oatmeal (“I used to feed the calves by hand and they thought I was their mother,” Young said. “I couldn’t sleep too good those nights when I knew they would get slaughtered.” He switched to grains and potatoes, and slept a whole lot better. Ran pretty good, too).
The first step toward going cancer-free the Tarahumara way, consequently, is simple enough: Eat less. The second step is just as simple on paper, though tougher in practice: Eat better. Along with getting more exercise, says Dr. Weinberg, we need to build our diets around fruit and vegetables instead of red meat and processed carbs. The most compelling evidence comes from watching cancer cells fight for their own survival: when cancerous tumors are removed by surgery, they are 300 percent more likely to grow back in patients with a “traditional Western diet” than they are in patients who eat lots of fruit and veggies, according to a 2007 report by The Journal of the American.
Eat like a poor person, as Coach Joe Vigil likes to say, and you’ll only see your doctor on the golf course.
“Your body needs to be shocked to become resilient,” Eric explained. Follow the same daily routine, and your musculoskeletal system quickly figures out how to adapt and go on autopilot. But surprise it with new challenges—leap over a creek, commando-crawl under a log, sprint till your lungs are bursting—and scores of nerves and ancillary muscles are suddenly electrified into action…
And finally leaving you with
Know why people run marathons? he told Dr. Bramble. Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles, Starry Night, intravascular surgery; they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human—which means it’s a superpower all humans possess.
*****All the above block quotes are straight picked up from Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run word to word as my interpretation may/may not lose the meaning of the words*****
On man’s best friend
I’ve somehow made a friend at the beach. I have to call him out every time but once he identifies me he comes running on all fours. And we have formed a bond which is, yes it simply is. I don’t have any words to describe him. I refer to him as ‘bestie’ when describing him to others but he’s the nameless friend I have.
Everything fades away for me in those moments with him. I don’t care about anything but him. I have a short conversation with him and he listens carefully but never responds with anything but love.
When I began running, I considered strays as a problem. And would blame them for not being able to run wherever I want. Now that I made friends with a few too many, I see them as allies. They’re lovers, who can love without reason and doubt.
Pet a dog when you see one.
To leave you with a rant on not having time to read by Daniel Pennac:
If you're wondering how you're going to find time to read, it means you really don't want to read, because no one has time. Life always gets in the way. The time to read is always time stolen from the tyranny of living.
Thank you for reading.
See you at the next issue.