work and work and non-august august.

faux-tigue or true overtraining?
here I am in august, burnt out on the burnt end of running routes and busy season at my job and less sleep than when I was strung out and anyway—runs are not feeling good. it is hot as hell. the effort required in a six mile circuit is nearly heroic. the mind will not still for long periods of time. the legs are heavy and angry and even undisciplined- awkward- in gait. strange. . . . so the runs are strained and ugly and fish-flopping funky.

work and work—new paintings by darren mulvenna and jay edge (c'est moi). opening on thursday, september 25th, with the premiere fourth friday reception following on September 26th. . . . here are some sneak-peaks (of my recent work), landscape-nudes, inverted dopplegangers, et cetera. . . .  the doppelgangers have continued for several years now, as have the landscape-nudes, and their visual vocabulary is fresh and reinvigorated: i am truly excited about them!   flesh soil paint.  three prominent elements of my creative cycle. we shall see what darren has up his talented sleeve.

figures, fugues, fuego, Fugueres.

august 10.  late summer, runs, similar to rimbaudian withdrawals (saisons a l'enfer).  celine thrusts of point/ counterpoint and fragment-language, foucault or schoenberg spindrift through fogmind.  jerks and kicks. figures and fugues and thought-drifts, pushing against the wall. sputters of motion, spastic passing of ocean's vague horizon;  suspended breath and mild hallucinations against asphalt of road which boils up through soles, ankles, shins, knees.  the asphalt ocean i run on. . . . figures and fugues meld towards a conjunction of meaning.  hallucination or inspiration?  just too fucking hot.

august 13th. the 8am air was already swampy. but by the end of the six mile run, the scorching sun would boil the feathers offa the wings of this bird. just another dante-launch of leg-language.  (run as poetry:  a personal happening.) 
and on canvas:  paint against two dancers, inksplash figures emerging, cadmium red light. 

the longdistancelungs—how the diaphragm builds and expands across the miles. . . . but to breathe in the swampy Carolina summer at ~7mph requires gills. . . .

berryville. . . (the fugue of the mountains. take a profile/ elevation map and place on a set of sheet music and play. or have 4 by 4 play it.) a wonderful experience full of sun   skeet-shooting  a few miles  good food and homegrown music.  daily route was (according to mapmyrun.com) 7.7 miles, a beautiful run from the farm by locke mill to watermelon park, a campground smelling of warm tortillas, hot dogs, and drunk campfires and back. 

the crisped confit days of august in the south. . . . atmospheric perspective swallows the horizons of trees, gray mist with swatches of blurred browngreen. visual sewage, mind sewage. heat burns body outta soul and flightless, heavy-winged albatrosses emerge where eyes once burned. burned out and burned out.  ready for autumn cooldown. some fugazi for the day, but not the first photo posted below. . .

french roast and fugazi. . .

mahler’s 150th birthday. the brutal brushes, the pushing-and-pulling colors, the sounds of knife scraping canvas, a female arabesque becomes a pennsylvania hill grided into mosaic farms, charcoal grinding her black dry-oil against the tweed of cotton, the pushing of titanium white into burntbone black, gray pasting form into fields of kinetic line. landscape and figure mingle and enmesh, a biomorphic dance, fugazi launching vocals and rampant rifts, then bach cello suites (rostropovich) and kyote sleeps as basho breathes.

the pleasure of work. the pleasure of the run. the pleasure of Being, Whole. (van gogh’s delirium?)

august fifth twenty-ten. caprice bistro for dinner.

my wife and I haven’t had a dinner date since our anniversary, and before that it was sometime around our wedding two+ years ago. so a date was due—and enjoy a date we did.

the hostess warmly received us, offering the window table on their banquette as we arrived. it was 6pm and we enjoyed a marvelous living theater of the street outside, watching downtowners walking dogs, moving from desk to bar, jogging, or riding the horse-drawn carriage for a tour (probably the finest window in downtown wilmington). my wife was beautiful and happy, reviewing the menu and sipping a mohito, freshly muddled mint wafting across the table. our lively waiter explained the specials, cracked a coupl’a jokes, and we ordered the first course: spinach salad and curried mussels. mussels are something of a culinary religion in the bistro menu, and man does Caprice nail them! yellow curry pushed and pulled the mussels like a spirited dance partner, allowing the mussels their own flavors, then enhancing them. the spinach salad was good, the fresh leaves like crisped butter pushing lightly bitter notes against a very good Roquefort cheese and sweetened walnuts.

for the entrée, my wife had the plat du jour—lapin au moutarde. the rabbit was perfectly prepared, and a hint of smoky pork-salt extracted the nuanced flavors of the meat. the mustard notes were pleasantly subtle, infused with a buttery white wine. the sauce coated a fresh fettucine, perfectly al dente and flavorful in itself.
i had the bistro steak. pomme frites arrived with the teres major steak, seasoned and grilled and served with a bordelaise reduction. pink and tender on the inside while nicely charred on the outside, the beef was amazing. the baked, herbed tomato and sauteed carrots were also delicious, that innate sweetness working the meat's earthier elements.

dessert was a simple, traditional faire (by choice)—my wife ordered the crème brulee, vanilla, with the crisp skin of the caramelized sugar cracking nicely beneath the spoon. my choice was also delicious, (though I caught some jokes for the simplicity of my dessert palette)the eternal "dame blanche." while vanilla ice cream is timeless and not very exciting, add the chef’s belgian chocolate and freshly whipped cream (amazing!) and voila—a beautiful dessert. a cup of dark coffee, procured from a regional coffee roaster, poured dark and deep to make the meal a fine success.

while my palette may be less advanced in some selections, the fundamentals of cooking are well-represented and are, infact, feted at caprice bistro. even a basic selection, whether beef or vanilla ice cream or coffee, becomes a multilayered, intricate flavor-map of culinary traditions of the French bistro.

mingus and miles and soon, mountains.

august 2. vision quest. the word just sort of slapped me upside the head, sipping coffee and sketching. every act is a sort of vision quest, is a form of prayer, is an act of faith. a run is a mini-vision quest, every conversation is a process of finding those contours of forms of self in the internal, infinite dark of Being. . . . hopi hopping with song and foot-schlogging.

y'days run was a solid run against thunder and rain; love running in the rain.  graphic novel idea:  diary of a punk-ass schlogger.

august 3rd--> ran a mixed-surface 10k, starting on the bike trail that cuts alongside the sidewalk merging onto lumina road to shell island and crossed the bird-sanctuary trail to the beach; paused against the clear horizon, then bent into the shore with burning calves and tight achilles and some beauties bathing in early-day sun and then the heat hit, so i slowed down to a moderate pace, eyeing the next water fountain. . . . enjoyed the sound of shoes compressing sand and the voices of children against waves and the general feel-good vibe of august beaches. run was good but heat invaded my endurance and a good pace to a slower form of trudging work. . . . silence on ride home, then mingus and cool shower and preparations for virginia hills this weekend.

some drawings below as studies for upcoming paintings, but photos may or may not capture the energy of upcoming work. . . . inverted, frenetic, disoriented. . . mad, mad & mingus.

july in review, the tragic clark lyons, an exhibit of paintings approaching. . . .

julliet 26 2010. 9h21am. the bastille day bum.  i will write about this man further, but for now will introduce him as the aged man who, after yelling "i am the rainman," passed out on the front stoop of our downtown restaurant on bastille day, just as we expected our first guests for the very busy evening. . . a terminal alcoholic, rotting of sour mash, cigarettes, and decay, he slept in spurts, yelling at traffic and horses and the cape fear.  he wore a fatigue jacket with military patches, a pair of swimming trunks that were riding low on his midsection, and a pair of fine wire-rim glasses around which fell red shocks of hair. anyway—he is now dead, having drowned in greenfield lake (where I run twice a week). he decided to “go take a bath” in the lake. clark lyons.  by the grace of god there go i. . . . why our paths crossed strikes me as something to mine for meaning.  here is a story from the local news source. 
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Instinct. Intuition. collective unconscious; the delirium of sleeplessness, of information overload, of self-ridicule and inelegant thought. flaccid half-sentences, fragments of awareness, splintered mindfulness. . . schubert’s piano sonata, opus 120. I think of rainy winter days in Wilmington. comforting, comfortable thoughts, vision. black oak cove road in candler nc. intuition should lead into paths of mind—delirium is insight without orientation: savor the ridiculous until it becomes graceful.

thursday july 29. ran 7m this morning and nearly lost a calf muscle to a black (what appeared to be a) pit bull on one of the narrow sand-gravel alleys downtown near the park. . . . behind the trucking company hq, near greenfield & 5th, i heard dogs barking, nothing unusual, and then heard the rhythmic tell-tale chi-chunk of running paws and turned around to see that dog coming right at me. . . . he wasn't slowing, so i didn't slow. then he was at me, and i jumped and yelled (at who? i dunno) 'AYH!" and the dog just stopped. no teeth. shocked. looking at me, he lunged, lazily or half-heartedly, and i turned around--'not supposed to look into an aggressive dog's eyes'—jogged into a run, continued running and the dog turned & went back home. next came, strangely, the quietest moment of the whole run. . . . a god moment for sure. and a fair run but my quads are very tired and my endurance lacks as my breath isn't strong in the wet air. . . what appeared to be dark clouds in distance was actually atmospheric perspective darkening the horizon, and it was hot and steaming.
fine storms now pound and beat, one hears stravinsky or webern, and the tomatoes and peppers will be very happy for this rain. the orchestra of nature drifts into silence.

saturday july 31 2010.   my shoes are being washed. once white, they are now a gruesome dark mud of sweat and soil. and they smell like a summer dog, running wild through fields of fetid ash, lion meat flossing canine-teeth. anyway. . . . end of the month and time for the numbers.
704 miles in 2010. 24 miles for the week (short run today, again due to stomach). 101 miles for the month. not great but satisfactory for an injury-recovery month. next week, trails in berryville va.

show at caprice bistro in 45 days. opening mid-september, the larger paintings begin. rendered as wet-drawings, Pennsylvania landscapes and frenetic dancers dominate the work. I am looking forward to the final results, but savor the abstracts of the process of painting, the medium’s joy and experience of itself.

still cannot believe I have my calf muscle. the dog incident haunts me as a weeping statue might. . . . a personal miracle, probably.

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.

cycles of golden wheat, fields in decay, Sun.

II.  how we relive the furious energies of history—we are accumulations of earth’s narrative energies. . . . God’s transformative organic state, biomorphic & self-celebrating.

Adrenalin & Thrust.

III. running painting cooking working (as prayer).

weds juillet quatorze—bastille day. 10 am. kyote rests for the moment. a thunderstorm harvests the silence of the morning, tearing clouds with bass throbs, slinging rain against window pane where a spider dances in rain-jerked web. coffee dark as the clouds.

Brahm’s second string quartet, rich and varied.  my current wet drawing series: Pennsylvania landscapes. beethoven’s late fugue quartet. natl geographic road atlas paintings. white and black acrylics with charcoal vine, the dusty drags into wet pigment.  (thoughts of baselitz, keifer, richter.)  oil sticks on paper, yellowing under linseed oil.

made my first sauce with (mostly) homegrown ingredients. a ragu of tomato, basil, oregano, all from my garden. . . . I then added store-bought garlic and spinach, simmered the ragu with rigatoni, pan-sauteed some organic chicken breasts. kyote and kas and I ate luxuriously with some hot black tea and iced water; very gratifying.

friday 11h39am. 6 mile run this morning. hot but fluid, observational and grateful, rather than the recent dread and agony of the work of running. . . . felt good and strong and even braced by the heat, with a cool breeze pouring salty from the ocean.  a massive hawk landed, posed on a nearby branch; a salamander with steel skin skittered. 
thought of philistines, the poetry of a run, the old testament warning against the philistines, where science overwhelms art and natural wonder with systematic efforts to reverse-engineer god. . . . to simply allow the abstract of a thing, its splendor and art, neither unimpeded nor distorted by theory and analysis—but instinct/ impulse appreciation of a canvas or a poetic transformation. to celebrate the organic with rituals of the spontaneous. reckless anarchy of awe.  to love, briefly.

I know my ponderings are paradoxical, self-contradictory, and often completely abstract. but there again, we live in a time in which an ocean--at least the gulf of mexico—is on fire. it is an age of gluttonous rhetoric and imploding paradox and torn wings. it is an age of the initial stages of love-lust: adrenalin and thrust. sturm und drang. it is the politician's language and industry's coaled breath.  loss and dismemberment of memory, derangement of the continuum, of history's narrative, of Whole Life, of Holy Life.  we are the incompletes, children of godel, vacant masks.  gouged galleries, recursive and vague.

god is an ephemeral orchestra of which I am a distinct voice. . . . . a holy joker, an empty vessel or a mute epiphany. the sounds of shoes kicking into sun, charcoal against cotton duck, psalms & ohms. laughter.