Month: June 2017

june 4/3.75 MILES

67 degrees
mississippi river road path, north

Still getting used to the heat. Otherwise the run went well. In the summer, I don’t have nearly as much stuff to put on before I go out for a run. No extra jackets or base layers or buffs or gloves or double socks. Just shorts, a shirt, socks and some shoes. Here’s a description of my running attire in the summer, in the form of an abecedarian poem:

Attire:

1. black shorts with white trim. Not black as
coal, they’ve faded in the sun. The
drawstring is gone too. It was a pretty bright blue. Now
elastic is all I have to keep the shorts from
falling down.
2. Green
headphones, if I’m listening to music, and
if I am, that music usually includes a
Justin or two: Bieber or Timberlake. My
kids wouldn’t
like me to admit that,
mostly because it embarrasses them. I say, here’s something to look forward to: when you’re 42, almost 43,
nothing embarrasses you!
Other favorites to listen to: Barry Manilow,
Prince. 3. A
quick-drying tank top, either in black or blue. I
really don’t care which.
Sometimes I wear a green tank-top, but it’s
thicker and not quick-drying, so only if the temperature is
under 70 degrees. Otherwise it’s
very uncomfortable.
4. White ankle socks, with an orange
x on the heel, at the end of the word, “Power Sox,” and mismatched trim that is
yellow on one foot and blueish green on the other. 5. Bright blue shoes with
zero swooshes, only coral swishes.

And here’s a poem describing my morning routine in the poetic form of nonet: 9 lines, first line has 9 syllabus, second has 8, and so on until ninth line has 1 syllable.

Morning Routine

Wake up at 6. Feed dog. Make coffee.
Write some while drinking the coffee.
Eat: cheerios, banana.
Wash face, brush teeth, comb hair.
Put on running clothes
and running shoes.
Go outside.
Walk some.
Run!

I wrote both of these poems because I was having some difficulty sorting out all of my ideas about ritual and repetition, habit as mundane or sacred (I also wrote about these in yesterday’s log). I decided the best place to start was to describe some of the mundane aspects of my run, like what I wear and what my pre-run routine is.

june 3/4 MILES

77 degrees
mississippi river road path, south

Another hot and sweaty run. Scott and I ran together today. We were both struggling because of the heat, although running through the sprinkles when we were almost done helped. We talked about one of my new favorite poets, Chen Chen, and his book When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities. We also talked about Scott’s Stravinsky project. And we were almost successful in avoiding talking about dictators and oppressive regimes.

Before and after running, I wrote two new things:

What’s the difference

between ritual and routine?
Superstition and belief?
When is it a prayer and when is it just proper form? Efficient breathing?
When does a habit become sacred?
Does it need:
a doctrine?
a theology?
hymns about souls and rejoicing and kingdoms and conquering and reigning?
chants about fathers and spirits and ghosts and sacrificing sons?
basement potlucks with seven layer dips?
uncomfortable pews?
getting up too early on a Sunday morning?
yes, it needs this.
Could it be that one defining characteristic of the sacred is
a refusal to stay in bed?

my purple toe

Have I told you about my purple toe? It’s on my right foot and it’s the second toe, the one that sticks out just a little bit farther than the others. Did you know, that this toe, the second one, turns purple? It’s not purple all of the time and maybe purple isn’t even the best way to describe it. Eggplant? I wish it were electric purple or purple mountain majesty or grape popsicle purple. Purple is my son’s favorite color. His computer case is purple. His clarinet case is purple. His suitcase is purple. His school binder, which he dissects and disembowels in new ways everyday—first removing the strap, then shredding the front pouch, then taking out the cardboard insert that helps keep it’s structure, then doing something to the 3 ring binders that I can’t quite figure out that makes them only barely close—is purple. The purple he prefers is royal purple. Not fuchsia or pearly purple or phlox.

My purple toe is purple from running. Technically, it’s my purple toenail, I suppose, but toe is much more pleasing to write and to hear and to imagine as purple than toenail. Anyone can have a purple toenail; just slap some nail polish on it and it’s purple. But a purple toe is special. A purple toe is a sign of a runner. Before I started running, I was unaware that this was a thing: your toe can turn purple. I read somewhere that it’s called runner’s toe or subungual hematoma. It’s also called black toe. I like purple toe, so that’s what I’ll call it, or “my purple toe” or “my perfectly purple, not painful at all, toe.” Is it the second toe for everyone? I don’t know.

Here’s how it usually works for me. After some random long/longish run, my second one, the toe that sticks out just a little bit farther, feels strange. It looks like it’s splitting. At first, it isn’t purple, but i know what’s coming: in a day or two, it will be purple. The toenail never falls off. It just grows back in freaky ways: twisted, bent, doubled. Maybe I should call it “my perfectly freaky purple, not painful at all, toe.” After the nail grows back, it usually returns to its normal color. That is, until the cycle begins again. The “purple toe effect” has been happening for at least five years now.

In the same online article where I read about “runner’s toe,” it was also referred to as a “runner’s badge of honor.” I’m not sure I’d say i’m honored to have my perfectly freaky purple, not painful at all, toe. More like delighted by how it grosses other people out. Or fascinated by its freakishness. Most of the time I forget about it. It’s just a toe that’s part of my right foot that enables me to run—and walk and skip and saunter—without much pain and hardly any injury. It sticks out farther than my other toes. And it just happens to be purple or, if you prefer, which I don’t, eggplant.

june 2/11 MILES

76 degrees
the lake nokomis loop, long

Hot! Sunny! Difficult! Today’s run was not pretty. Well, the path was pretty. The lake was pretty. The many bridges that I ran over were pretty. But my run was not. It was hard and hot and tiring. But I did it, with the help of several walk breaks.

I decided to do my long run today instead of tomorrow because it is my 6th anniversary of running. I started on June 2, 2011. I used the couch-to-5k program and ran/walked less than 2 miles. Today, 6 years later, 11 miles! My route today included the Minnehaha creek path, which is what I ran on in 2011.

I had grand visions of doing some cool poetry experiment with the run: maybe stopping every mile to compose a line. But, I was too distracted and uninspired by the heat. So, instead, I’ll mark the occasion by sharing something that I’ve been working on about the body electric. It’s inspired by Prince (“electric word life”), a pbs show about Ibex and the harrowing lengths they go to replenish their electrolytes (scaling seriously steep cliffs), Walt Whitman and “I sing the body electric,” the movie Fame and their version of “I sing the body electric.” Marilyn Nelson’s “is” and Marie Howe’s “the this,” Frédéric Gros’s philosophy of walking and my own wanderings on electricity and the beauty of machines, developed while running. I suppose there’s a dash of Emily Dickinson in here too (her nobody).

the body electric

The body electric is not a metaphor. The body is electric. It contains electrolytes, that, when consumed, break up into positively and negatively charged ions that travel by water through the body, triggering electrical impulses in the nerves and muscles. Every body needs electrolytes to function properly. They’re found in sodium, chloride, calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphate.

The body is a machine.
Not the body as machine
or the body is like a machine
or the body is only a machine.
But, the body is a machine.
An efficient machine,
capturing energy, consuming minerals, converting air into breath.
The body is an intricate machine,
made up of muscles and tendons
and ligaments and joints and bones
and organs and arteries and veins
and fluids and systems
that work together in the complex process of locomotion.
The body is a marvelous machine,
containing strange creatures
with multiple heads and fantastical names.
The body is a beautiful machine,
composed of grace and exuberance and joy.
The body is a powerful machine,
able to endure intense pain and absorb tremendous force.
The body is a delicate and temperamental machine;
it can shut down from overuse, lack of use or repeated abuse.

This body, my body, is not any body and it is not the body. It is just a body, a somebody who is happily a nobody, running and flying and floating free, feeling the sizzle of the sand under my feet on the path and the howl of the wind rushing by my ears, passing under the shadows of the towering tree in the midst of other bodies, who are somebodies and nobodies as well but who feel the earth and the sky, just the same but differently too. Each of us an I. A self. A soul. A body. But also a we. Selves. Souls communing. Charged bodies with electrons flowing freely. The Body Electric.

june 1/REST

I’d love to run today because it’s so beautiful outside, but I won’t. It’s my day to rest. My right hip is a bit sore and needs a break. And tomorrow is my 6 year runniversary and I’m planning to do my long run to mark the occasion.

This morning I worked a bit more on my sonnet about attention. I tried to stay truer to the Shakespearean form by using 10 syllables in each line. In one or two lines, I failed. Not sure if it’s really in iambic pentameter either.

ATTENTION

is the beginning of a devotion
which can be a form of daily prayer
that you undertake while you’re in motion
running in and through the outside air.

A prayer given with lungs and feet
to inspire the trees and absorb the earth
a letting go to a steady beat
desiring nothing but the rebirth

of an earnest and a loving belief
that has the power to break you open
and to spill out the terrible grief
caused by a decreased sense of hope and

increased apathy, a monstrous twinning.
To end, attention is the beginning.

What I’m Fascinated by, a list
  • breathing/respiration as the process of inspiration (in) and expiration (out). I want to play with these some more.
  • absorption: energy absorption + how Frédérick Gros describes it The Philosophy of Walking: “But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads (85)”.
  • body prayer: how does the body pray? What is praying–the rituals and habits?
  • Simone Weil and attention as prayer.