Injury Atopia Aporia Suk.

When uninjured, you never see an injury coming. when injured, you never see it passing. i'm living off advil, sweets, fish and chips, watching the tour de france by morning and sunday in hell by afternoon, and i'm craving an ease of motion which does not come. healing is an intrusive thing. jammed back grinds guts no matter what posture I contort towards. blah blah.  

meanwhile josef suk was a composer and string virtuosi from czechoslovakia whose music explored a wide range of emotional textures but the first few pieces I ever heard held that horror-vice of the war-era art, equal to the soviet composers of that time. i did not realize his recent death (early june?) but i heard an excerpt of a violin concerto today, sawing out some nice melodies which would then freefall into staccato reels of bitter whining & shrieking to build back the layers of a robust sonic boast. The tones moved fluidly, wholesome and moody. i remembered the box set of suk's chamber compositions, a local music store had it for months and i was always saving to purchase it. a yellow box accented by some design on the perimeter, his portrait in the center, a slavic grimace, wide face and stern eyes, the delicate carving of a violin's tune-keys by his cheeks. i never purchased it, buying instead gould's bach, bartok or mahler, paint or drink, but I can visualize the set now. parenthesised with stravinsky, shostakovich, schnittke, schumann. . . . the mad greats. put on some suk and pick up the red calvary stories of babel, some nabakov or chekov, (my wife would swear on dost's notes from the underground but you need a good translation), boil the coffee dark, add sugar and/or schnapps and you've got a fine winter ahead. Music makes struggle and suffering a savory thing.

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Lucian freud. Dead at the age of 88 years. Freud is a hero to me, equal to de Kooning. His handling of the nude, his choice of model, his torn upholstery couch and the piles of rags, a ragged cot, his impasto brushwork, the range of palette in a single painting, hell-- in a single leg! The definitive modern figurative artist-- conflicted, voracious, angry, horrified, disciplined, precise. Poetic. The lyrical forms of street sluts of london. Junkies with purple cocks. Royalty. Broken actors with their long torsos slumping in sleep. Blue limbs of weariness. Cold studio morning light. Interrogation light. A pale plant, a pale coat. The backyard of a london apartment house. Blue veins of a model harmonize with the blue veins of the hardwood floor.

A few years ago, the MoMA hosted a show of etchings by Freud. The exhibit also marked Freud's longtime use of certain models. Several preparatory drawings were included, and interspersed were paintings of those models (some famous and godly, some homely, some anemic and atrophied), a marvelous show of draftsmanship. I remember the strong marks of grease pencils, the muscled pull of burnt-bone black forming the contours of a swollen stomach. Hatching like a madman's topographical map, but distinctly massed. Technically sound.  Something sublime contained beneath a rage.

(Freud's longtime friend Francis Bacon had recently died, his liver devoured by drink and turpentine and a combative life. A theater of nirvana:  Baudelaire Twombly Rodin Freud Bacon de Koooning Turner Michelangelo and Rembrandt, kicking back with coffee and talking shop. Foucault and Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard.  Shostakovich Suk Dvorak discussing politics, cello accompaniment. An atopia of remembrance and passion.)

A good friend of mine used to wait on Freud at his restaurant in London. Lee would describe him as such: He wore a belt of old rope. He ordered oysters and a demi-bottle of pouilly fumee. His fingers were caked with paint and charcoal. he would sketch his lunch away on paper napkins that he would then shove in his pocket as he paid the bill. Quiet and elegant. Contemplative. But he always took his napkin drawings.

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beethoven's appasionato piano sonata and storms pass as kyote sleeps. i'm flipping through a book on rodin and admiring the straight eroticism of his work. to work, one must be in love. only then is the work credible. beyond love however, one can work in bursts off of lust, but it is an inefficient fuel. highly combustible and dangerous to handle. But sometimes its what one possesses:  Marvelous red fugues. Scars of touch on clay, touch of canvas. Clay, body.  Ether.

Snow-tide and such, December wrap-up.

December 23. Arctic Monkeys, a great band, and a name conjuring an image worthy of today's winter weather, my run through it. Thoughts on the Gator Run 50k exude an excitement approaching inspiration, the wild energy harnessed by furtive preparations. Research on endurance nutrition introduces new foods, synthetic-type non-foods including gels and chews, and "super-foods" such as quinoa (and, perhaps, fig newtons?), while daily running reinforces mental fortitude and physical durability, work and work.  Solitary self-studies reflect of the nuances of posture, generate private mantras against pain management and towards the continuing (basic, rudimentary) leg-labors of miles, the muscle-boils of intrepid determination.   I make lists of reasons why I should finish a 50k, hoping they will be there when I am struggling in my own private hell.  Much of the real preparation is accepting that 31 miles is ticked off one mile at a time, and there is no magic chariot, neither genetic nor chemical nor Zen/Tao mindfulness, that will push me through the six 5.2 mile loops other than my own body and will.

Meanwhile, a simple 7 miler has become something of an ordeal through a bout of illness, and maybe a touch of Christmas lethargia. Despite the drag of mind and body, the miles accumulate, against the viral laryngitis and bronchitis cursing the first half of my week, in fact sending me to the Medac on Tuesday morning. Against the delirium of holidays, the anxieties of Being, the punishments of Life, the curse of melancholy and false inspirations and dry paint brushes and impatient two-year olds and lost thoughts and vapid ambitions and the settling of debris into something called Existence, the miles accumulate. A goal of running 31 miles is the soul-glue at this moment, at this juncture, coupled with the pleasure of the Christmas season with my family.  But the work remains the steady metronome of routine I crave.

December 26th. A literary mania has moshed through my home, leaving a storm of books. (Sometimes reading is the best medicine against writer’s block.) A funny read is Sh*t My Dad Says. Dostoevsky’s Notes continue, interrupted by a Christmas gift, John L. Parker’s Once A Runner. . . . A graphic novel, DareDevil Noir, was my fun read for the past week. I would especially recommend Sh*t.  Lastly, a book on Rodin commands study and awe, the maddest 3-d artist since Michelangelo, and his polished marble torsos are contrasted against his vicious ink-slung figure drawings.

And now a run, or rather, the documenting of one.

The snow fell through my morning’s 8 miler, fell in fact from the coffee pot's first stirrings at 7am, two cups before I entered the window's surreal theater of dizzying ice-crystals and snow flakes, before those snowflakes shocked eyelids and tongue, before the melodic beat of sleet on wind-jacket, before the softened jam of soggy shoes. In rare moments of good running, I could have counted the many snowflakes on my eyelids in their tiny coldness, my legs running but my mind searching out the meditative silence in the muffled, dazzling air.   The snow was wonderful, the clean air was invigorating. Snow is a rare delight on the Eastern coast, but the run remained, as has been the case recently, more of a wading-push of legs, a thick-blooded trudge, Roadside puddles soaked my shoes and socks within a mile, forcing me onto asphalt, my legs protesting with dread through the concussions.  Quietly I traversed the neighborhoods into the deserted Ogden Park. But a snow-run was a pleasant mind-drift, at least in the middle four miles and certainly afterwards,  fixing a quesodilla for my son who ate voraciously for the first time in a couple of days. I watched him eat, watched him wipe buttery fingers on his shirt between bites of quesodilla, and I sipped French Roast coffee with extra sugar and cream while snacking on a peppermint-chocolate pretzel. Pandora radio played some early punk and the clatter of typing becomes a percussive accompaniment and the rest is delicious, luscious, lush, and my world refocuses.