Run & Paint

Friday, June 25, 2010

mundial, some running, journal paintings, a random Her.

how foreign language conjures names long lost and neglected. . . . . remembrances odd and anachronistic, false insertions of the associative unconscious. . . . abstractions dominate our awareness. blurs outta the corner of Mind’s eye.

june 24. 10h25am.

following a 6 mile jog (meaning i started running and ended walking, so the average of the two = jog). did a wrightsville beach circuit. . . . beach was nice and uncrowded and now paraguay versus new zealand with the vuvezelas blaring like rabid monks and a pb & banana & honey sandwich with coffee as black beans start simmering and laundry rolls and maya sleepily licks her snout.

june 25th 589m/yr; 50m/mon; 19m/wk.

ky is 16 months.


ran by this chic y’day, and strangely I now recall (distort) her as wearing a hoodie. she stared at me as she ran by, an enigmatic study. . . . she may have been mid-thirties, stark eyes lupine and hard as a hunters. . . . she accused my thoughts as she ran, was inside my head as a drifting aquatic voice, oil and water, she was melancholy and tragic and searching. she was running and running well. . . . a haunting visage, a smokey portrait burned into mind’s strange gallery, cosmic graffiti.

three-point-five miles in neighborhood, blazing at 10am. . . . quiet across the scorched asphalt. . . . . echoes of footsteps. garden is wild and dreadlocked and finally one fine tomato produced. . . . heirlooms struggle in the heat as jalapenos mature nicely. . . . brazil versus Portugal en vivo. . . . escribo el futuro.

Monday, June 21, 2010

a bountiful summer solstice.


the pure massive reckless speed of the brainstorm. . . . visual verbal, mingus-madtype jangle of language. . . . paint-stirred prose, jutting into image.
the runners body was haunted, was strangely false, like an unfinished rodin sculpture, displaced and sagged. . . . everywhere the runners walk, wearing their short shorts and their sports tops and sometimes rank with sweat and effort and other times cool & dry as a wine cellar. . . .


6.17.10

5 miles at the coast. hot. eleven miles for the week as knee heals, and kyote and I watch the world cup. . . . love the world news pouring from the pouty mouth of a senorita, lubricious hips swaying to a marching mariachi band behind, as the over-caffeinated dude in the suit spurts laughter bursts and apparent witticisms into the monologue. I understand about 20 percent of the newscast, but enjoy 100 percent of it.


a steep & slippery downslope my fitness suffered during the three weeks of nonrunning, and the two weeks of drastically reduced running prior to that. in total I lost over one month of running, acclimating to the southern coastal heat, and maintaining the level of endurance I was achieving. . . . . I struggle with three miles, my knee still funky but mostly just getting the rhythm of body back into the act of running. to choreograph the whole physical action into a smooth run demands breath, strength, mental fortitude, determination, all elements currently slumping. . . . while building that wholeness of form, I look to painting and others runners for inspiration.

6.19 three miles and the end of the run-week. 18 miles for the week.

6.20.10



kyote and I continue to watch the world cup on the Univision/ Mexican channel. . . . a fantastic, charged group host the events, and while I understand 30% of what they discuss, I thoroughly enjoy their fervor. kyote has learned to sing-say with me that rare but manic note: “gooooooooool!”

4 miles today in hot noon sun. bearing down on the chest and head, the sun just starts breaking me so much quicker. the thermometer was at 88 when I returned, and the heat index was likely higher. spring ends at midnight tonight and summer is already melting my soles. . . .

Friday, June 4, 2010

sun and music and paint. . . .


some pictures from the previous three days of storms and garden-labors and ramble. meanwhile i have discovered an incredible coffee-- Caribou Mahogony. . . . . an excellent home-brewed cup of java.



garden bites green into the afternoon as paynes gray storms churn from the southwest.

Adrian Ghenie is a terrific, contemporary german painter.  also a cuban painter, alejandro campins, is a visual marvel.

above is a mottled light-puzzle of a decayed homestead in northern virginia, and i thought it was beautiful.
june 4th. two miles y’day, a lively jaunt, a pleasant stroll before the rain began. but a recovery still slow and cautious. three miles today—mostly brisk walking. felt my shoes melting on the asphault road.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

tiger balm, RICE, restlessness and anxiety. . . .

may 26th. a second anniversary in a private hut-table at indochine restaurant. superb. a dusked drizzle tapped a tranquil rhythm throughout our meal. the appetizer was a steaming crock of mussels, served with a delicious coconut milk curry, a wonderfully deep flavor alternating with sweet & spicy notes. from there we had a dragon tail of shrimp and orange wasabi. the entrees—i had aubergines and tofu curry, kas had the “happy asian melody.” concluding the meal was an apt plate of fried bananas and vanilla ice cream with whipped cream on top.

y’day was my trip to the orthopedic.  the lobby was a busy bustle of wheelchairs, neck braces, shoulder apparatuses, hip cuffs, casts and crutches. . . . the percussive shake of pill bottles and nurse shuffles. once seen, I was my usual flustered self as the doctor asked me to explain what was going on. after rambling while facing my three x-rays showing a perfectly good knee (the patella “may have a slight tilt” he says), then getting a few motion tests and pokes and prods on my left knee, the benevolent doctor announces the verdict. I have patellafemoral pain, aka runner’s knee. neither surgery nor shot will relieve it. there is no serious damage, no torn meniscus, just enflamed tendon and ligament and possible muscle scooped up by ridged bone with every step. burning my knee out with overuse he said. hhmmph. alternating ice and heat, tiger balm rub and alleve or Tylenol should do the trick.

so a mixed bag of news—but since surgery was not an option on any level, an overall positive prognosis. . . . moving on.

may 28  blank canvases.

running long distances is a meditation. the psyche's narrative throughout a run parallels the various emotive stages of life. the endurance necessary to heal various life-struggles and damages is represented on a macrocosmic level in a run-- a sort of physicaly poem or metaphor. . . . . to remind myself of my strength and courage, to reawaken my elan vital, i continue to run. i run to reclaim my Self. the moment i worry about what another person thinks of my running, i desecrate the beauty of the act. i lose the act as a meditation, as an expansion, as a pure thing.  i clone consumer concerns of name-tag emblems and icons, i clone my body to magazine covers, i abstract the act of the run into a flailing eruption, an unnatural grotesque.

the canvases sit untouched but for charcoal spills, lazy lines, and the marks of their journey through false starts and abandoned/ recycled imagery. . . . they evolve like ruins in a garden.


june 1. coffee on the porch as rain drenches the freshly mowed lawn. tomato leaves blink against the falling rain.

memorial day weekend passed with full home of in-laws and then friends from Fairfax, VA. a social weekend full with straight shifts running late, getting home at 1 am two nights in a row. Carolina beach one morning and Wrightsville beach the next. swimming and playing in sun and sand. my knee is now ten days out of running and into healing.

canvases on back deck as images emerge, lotuses from the mire of mind. . . .