Happy August, dear reader!
Yesterday I had a ‘photo shoot’ for being an Ambassador of the Fight!CRC campaign. It was kind of hilarious, because, a) I really don’t have a Zoolander face, and in fact, have a dumpling face, and b) I had no idea what the heck I was doing. Also, I really wished I could’ve been ten pounds lighter (the camera adds ten pounds!) and that I could’ve had a haircut. However, we have this thing called COVID-19 going on, everything is messed up, I am otherwise super busy, and this was the week we had to do the photo shoot. I kind of got into it after a while, though, and my photographer was very professional and was able to coax some emotions out of me: “Carefree, charismatic”, “Okay, now stoic, pain,” “Now, strength, professionalism”, so that by the end, I was able to bring up a face (or two) on cue. Without smiling, which is, unfortunately, my default face. While I don’t have the photographer’s pictures yet, L did come with me and took a few of the process, including a video of me doing a sloppy catwalk in a local park (I should’ve tucked my shirt in!). In any case, if they think a few photos of me will help raise money for colon cancer, so be it.
BTW: Fight!CRC is an amazing colorectal cancer advocacy, research and support group that has utilized social media really well to raise awareness. Plus, I like their logo colors (blue and orange! Go Tigers! Go Mets!). On August 15, my business partner, Dr. Alex Kim, and my office staff are going to hike in the hills of the Manhattan suburbs to contribute to ONE MILLION STEPS for the ONE MILLION colon cancer survivors in the US. If you’d like to learn more or donate, click here.
One of the photos required me to be doing one of my ‘hobbies’. I was a bit lame here and came ill-prepared. I had thought about bringing my ‘I Heart Guts’ colon, because I basically have no life outside of work. The photographer asked, But what do you like to do?Do you like to play on your phone? Listen to music? I kept insisting that I wanted to take a picture of me sniffing some flowers because I love plants but he was not convinced that this was a viable option. I thought to myself, This is because my hobbies are not that photogenic. Writing? I could’ve brought a typewriter, I guess. Drawing? In the end, the photographer took a few shots of me on a Citibike but maybe I could’ve done better. It’s not that I don’t have hobbies, in fact, I think I have too many to count.
(Do I swing my arms like Bigfoot? photo above from Google Images) I read about everything, I am curious about everything-- physics, memory, cooking, math, Bigfoot… speaking of which, my most recent obsession has been astrophotography. In case you hadn’t heard, July was a great month for amateur astronomers. Neowise, also known as comet C2020/F3, is the closest to Earth as it ever has been. It will not come back this way for another 6,800 years. So, being the FOMO-rat that I am, I dug out the telescope that L got for my birthday ten years ago-- it has moved around with us to at least 4 different abodes, but I never got it to focus so I had given up entirely. Now, ten years wiser, and with a few new technologies (including only $30 worth of camera adapter equipment), I was able to hook my DSLR up to the telescope and take some photos. By day, I sweat in the impermeable blue gowns of the operating room, and by night, I sweat in the 90-degree humidity of our little balcony, trying to find something to see beyond the city lights.
On my first night, I took a photo of the moon.
After about an hour of searching, allowing my eyes to adjust to the dark, I was ready to give up and stow the telescope away for another ten years. Then, just as I swung the telescope to the right, I caught a streak of light right in the spot where my Sky Safari app said the comet should be. I took a hundred photos at different settings, and moved the telescope around to make sure I wasn’t catching a stray glow. Finally the earth shifted and the glow fell behind the artificial horizon of the buildings. The problem is, you can barely see the comet with the naked eye-- the camera does a better job of filtering out light from the darkness. There’s also nothing to focus on, if you can’t see anything. I’ve read tips about focusing on the brightest nearby star, which is exactly what I was doing when I saw this streak. The city lights also make this difficult. The next night, I tried again. When it was still a light out, I looked at that same spot and didn’t see anything, but as it got darker, that same two-tailed streak appeared. I didn’t get that streak when I moved the telescope elsewhere. I’ve compared it to other Neowise photos, and I think it’s there. Being that the next time around is 6,800 years away, I’m going to say I saw it. It’s blurry, like that famous photo of Bigfoot, but I mean, you can clearly see Bigfoot is there.
“Focusing on something you can’t even see” should be the motto of my life. I guess some people call it blind faith. We have spent so many years running towards a finish line that we can’t even see; worse yet, like the stars, the target keeps drifting away. In the end, though there is nothing to do but keep going.
Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, which my sister once embroidered onto a canvas for me:
“Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” --The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
In case you missed it, Friend Links for my most recent Medium articles:
Five Things You Should Know About #MedBikini
I Lost My Sense of Smell to COVID-19...110 Days Ago
Please Wear A Mask (a poem, published on Resistance Poetry and soon to be posted on Inspiration in Isolation)