Run & Paint

Monday, March 14, 2011

A pause in the breath, a break in the stride...on second thought.

less than two weeks until the gator trail 50k.

Meanwhile the past week has been a physical disaster and my body remains slumped, choked, uncertain. It began with thai take-out, green curry with eggplant, bamboo, tofu, to be followed by 48 hours of misery, my body folded horrendously into itself, an internal meatmash out of a sinclair novel. . .the running rhythm collapsed and my 50 mile week decayed to a 17 mile week with my longest run being a struggling eight miler on Sunday (where I learned that I do not like body-warmed strawberry-banana gu gels). I am left with one more week-long cycle of running and a three day ween before my first 50k will spin its own organic experience, a free-form narrative finding its own pace and tone and extemporaneous momentum. . . the layers of self will be pulled back to some raw core where paint and language and trail and solitude and music will fall away into a pure act, an act perhaps approaching ascetic in its surrender for a brief moment. . . a passage of satori at mile 27 would be nice.

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completing any path of any distance is ultimately putting one foot in front of the other and breathing and having patience and the guts, pushing the mind-- pushing the legs...feet grinding out bones and blisters across the increments of space. Covering miles requires an actionable faith with multiple layers of belief and drive, the ability to push through physical burnouts, to endure the emotional upheavals, to fuel an engine of physical mantras. It's the drive to complete something no matter how anonymous and strange and personal. . . running a 31 mile circuit on a trail in the middle of the woods is an abstract art and few others will give any attention to this spiritual/physical/mental work; long-distance running is not a universal goal.  But this is my experience and its culmination, a distinct passage in my life fugue.  Running is my time of recreation, a time to reclaim, my time to Re-Create. Its a binge, its a purge, a tribal sundance, a sweat lodge.  A run as in Life. Putting one foot in front of the other and following through, into the nexus and the core, into a continuum, into an actionable faith and self-reliance.