Run & Paint

Friday, July 23, 2010

the various levels of endurance in any given day.

the endurance of the day. there is always endurance. whether running through fever fires, insomnia fires, july fires, or family fires, one finds the heat of Life bearing down. . . the fires of the blacksmith, fires of struggle, fires of destruction, fires of a phoenix wings.

reflections on the texts of foucault, hoffstadter, schoenberg, pound, d.f. wallace, naipaul. . . . days on the bus riding to coffee & bookstore. winter coats and gray rain in roadside trenches, coffee steaming in gloved hands, paint-spattered, mindful and bodyless. bus rides with the cross-cut culture of ilm, smells and sounds and characters. material poverty bore creative prosperity.   physical ease yields mind complacency.  the city bus is a symbol of creative craving, of passion, of redemption.

still life from run today: the snake—laying in road with full body uncoiled, fat and fed, muscled body like rolled copper with rusting cream drops. perfect design, tattoos. head is illusion, Escher-style, milky copper merges crimsoned into black asphault. . . . flat head, dead head, copperhead. . . by my next lap the copper bulk is removed by feasting hawks and squirrels.
(cautious footsteps on mexican walkways.  the abundance of mexican iguanas, camouflaged against sand and stone.)

tuesday july 20th, 11h39am. seven miles downtown. heat and busybusy mind. finished sillitoe’s saturday night and sunday morning. energized language captures vividly the life of english working-class, factory-town characters—told via close third-person narrative with Arthur as main character. the book is a rewarding read. now “the loneliness of the long distance runner,” and am halfway through it. love the character, his lack of resentment, his arrogance, and his messy emotionalism. i recall clockwork orange for some reason. . . . thin connection, but theories of treatment for criminal reformation are presented in both texts through unrepentant antiheros.

kyote has his first soccer ball—a mitre size 3. already a brilliant dribbler, he is working towards a midfielder or even a striker position.



itinerary: in a few weeks, a trip to berryville va for some running and camping and friends and family. . . . triple lakes trail marathon in october. battleship half marathon in november. in november, if possible, i will try to head to georgia for a weekend prior to thanksgiving, do some running with the in-laws near stone mountain.

thursday july 21st. seven-point-five morning-miles with sunheatsun bearing down and rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto on the way home from downtown with a stumped, bent twig of an elderly lady nearly causing me to wreck. her husband sat in the passenger seat behind dark glasses staring blankly, possibly dead, but entirely trusting of his wife’s driving. little does he know. . . . upon returning home, strip salt-starched shorts and cut a thick, chilled watermelon slice. a moment of ecstacy, of quietude.

gonna add it up: 21m/ 71 m/ 677 m.

a few quiet moments in the run. . . . the heavy roots of swamp-trees pour into the green water. a caiman americain drifted on the surface amongst the slow gear-legs of the turtles, their shells swaying with algae like long hair sifting the water. a nice run of still mind; sometimes its ten miles before the mind relents and is serene and quiet. . . . . the ride home gradually crescendos into busy, scampering mind, driving Market street and cursing between vicious clangs and lugubrious adagios of rach’s third (van cliburn on the keys?). frustration-anger is sometimes the worst pollutant of my existence.

sweetened Sumatran coffee with the big B’s on the onkyo: beethoven, beastie boys, bob marley, bluegrass.

friday. four mile run at the summer rest loop and wb park. HOT and Humid: some walking along the way. . . reflected that it is not the numbers, the gadgets, the suffering, the ego, or even the completion of the run that counts. it is the process, the journey—the narrative-- of the run, the experience of motion and body and mind-colors in muscle movement, the burning of legs which is breath ignited, the body-brine frothing in shoes, the poetry of space, the alignment of prayer and Act. . . . to avoid the Deadspace—the mindless passage from point A to point B—and to be present and awake within the act. that is the whole deal. brine bakes on shoulders to dusty brown.