Run & Paint

Monday, February 22, 2010

Luxury of memory & a moveable feast

feb 17th


the luxury of memory—the proustian theater of one’s history. subjective, subjugated, dismembered and often obscured or lost or discarded, the collected images of a life are the tools & resources of a writer’s labor. . . . . impressions, the Moments captured in suspended impact, discovered and pondered in quiet reflection or movement or against a mahler symphony or a haydn string quartet, whatever the vehicle of remembrance may be. . . . . memory is associative, is giant, is omnipresent, is banal and grandiloquent. and it stirs always against the mire of Now.



while running, the childhood imagery often flails around—likewise upon drifting into sleep at night. . . . . when painting, I rarely glimpse this cavernous womb of my being, the nascent years lost and undisturbed as the colours and contents unconsciously already contain these images. I vaguely remember high school and even less so the years before. I have flashes of recall—an image or a smell or a slight association, like peering through a mostly shuttered window, and then it evaporates as quickly as it appeared—never surfacing on consciousness. never really known or studied. stuck in a hot attic. mark. the many homes mom and I lived in.



Ash Wednesday. a day of reflection and a season of repentance. of promise and aspiration. a day to begin a new foundation. ash wednesday. let love and health prosper, especially while nothing else prospers. . . . .

I have given up daytime television for lent—a nasty habit which as seized upon my imagination and creative energies. a monopoly of mindlessness ended. run & paint y’all. paint & run.



thursday brought a fast eight mile run across wilmington’s downtown, on the cape fear and around Greenfield park and was quiet and isolated but for one couple I passed twice and one female runner who smiled when we passed the second time. otherwise it was my road and my footfalls for company and drive. that and the blighted neighborhoods surrounding the park and up third street where I once bought bags or attempted to. . . . .



February 19 2010. a good run followed by Sumatran coffee (a valentine’s day gift from kas) a hot shower and bach’s art of the fugue (the emerson string quartet doing a re-orchestration thereof). some rice-a-roni and cheese quesadilla for lunch. today’s run was around 6 miles, fast miles, in a moderately warm day, bringing my total this year up to 162 miles. between y’day and today, a marked improvement in my running times. my endurance, breath, my gait. . .. . all seems stronger and longer, focused. bach helps. it also helps that the wind has diminished, the sun is bright, and the air is warming. soon I will hear reggae and sand-crunches on the beach as I run.



moving the studio back home next week. after some twenty months of operating the studio, I must now admit a certain level of defeat. . . . . just too difficult to get downtown, get setup and into the creative space, and maintain a schedule of it. creativity & painting will be more accessible if here, at home, and more convenient to view and work on. I look forward to it.

Monday, February 15, 2010

continuing the distance. . . . .

when did the studio pour outta the door into downtown wilmington? into the shores and sand-swept sidewalks of Wrightsville. . ? when did the run become the art, the art become the run. . . . . always a physical painter, now I’ve found the physical surmounted the palette, surmounted the brush, found the feet and the beat of the street as arms swing and minds blank into eyes and sounds and a synergized experience of it all. . . . .

beethoven’s late piano sonata, no. 29, performed by r. goode, a most tender and neurotic piece. quietly belligerent.

ran a 15k this weekend, saturday January 23rd. 73 minutes, establishing a pace of 7m41secs. more on that later, or not. the race is run and 9.3 miles felt longer today than 10 miles just five days ago. . . .

when not doing dishes after cooking dinner or taking care of kyote, when not doing my laundry or working, when I have the energy, I run. neither time nor passion permits me the studio experience, the concentration of inspiration working into canvas and focus and that is my life. I have sold much of my soul, a mountain soul, for the beach. I have sold my soul for a server position. I have sold my soul to be a family man. I have sold my soul to America. I would like to have a farm in some hills, near the mountains and near a city, where I can run and chase birds and seasons and meditate and not be mind-broken by the noise of rat-race futility.

I wan the freedom to say “I am not in a good mood today. Don’t fuck with me.”

February 15th. snow valentine and a run with friends.

ran five miles with s and j this weekend. a lovely run, despite the cold wet wind carrying the sun offa snow. yeah it snowed friday night—five- six inches in fact. was pretty and refreshing and s. led the run around ogden park and through a “trail” which was really a partial frozen creek/ construction road and snow blinded each step and made me nervous, but ultimately was exhilarating and I regretted my reluctance. a hard run, with some chest congestion remaining (after two weeks of it now), and the coldest 7 miles ever the day before with the winter storm rolling in like Beethoven, and the good vibe and warm accomplishment sense of things really didn’t hit until I was at work serving valentine couples for eight hours that night. then I was glad to have the experience. but upon leaving s. and j. I felt a deep, odd depression and even declared myself a solitary runner for a while. they are so much faster than me and just throw it into the upper gears that I completely lack the talent of. but that’s that—I am just a slow runner, like a Johnny cash type beat in my run that just keeps going. . . . . never really quickening nor slowing. . . . really—I am just running, a physical impulse, like chewing or sleeping, muscle working and mind pacing along, but just a milling of the legs and heart and blood and footfalls and the music of the mind enmeshed with a passing world.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

palimpsest. . . . .

palimpsest. . . A manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible. . .

the coast swallows itself at high tide. . . mind swallows itself as language, pulse-throb, image-vacuum; reeling masks of time passed and the nocturnal veil of memory is lifted to a Pandora-panorama. . . the loss of sacrosanct and wild rapturous angst bounds to boundless rampage; a lazy spiritual cleansing, but effective. . . purification by fire. vietnam zen monks burning in pleads, falling in flames as people watch, listen, smell. . . just fucking watching, listening, smelling. . .

psalms. . . flights of language like summer devouring spring. . . the plunge of abrupt understanding. Awakening. . . rhapsodic. rapturous. rabid. romantic. the cruel severance of dream and youth and promise and the loss of the Sacred. . . so pretentious and abstract a word. sacrosanct. perhaps a catechism of the soul? an ephemeral will to grasp, explain, define. . . a psalm is a moment of insight into a still life, a natur morte; loss of relevance yields lucid captured comprehension. . . this sounds so fucking bleak. . . perhaps a blue psalm. a blue fugue. palimpsest. . . vanilla extracted through creams, saffron through white wine and olive oil. . . the love wrestled from a desired paramour. . . dreams writhing through the dulled eyes of a solemn wanderer; the modern pilgrim. the explorer of the distant unquestioned, disquieted and alone; wanders into a brutal winter and orders a warmed cognac, swirls the liquor studying the cascade of color, feeling his palm warm under the golden tincture.

schopenhaur's cafe. . .

schoenberg's cafe. . .

stravinsky's cafe. . . syncopated yearnings leap as a flaming fawn. . . some guy reading on the chair beside me got a hard-on. an older man, say 50 or so. . . I couldn't figure that one out.

science is a "refinement of everyday thought" said einstein. a refinement of thought. . . an ascension, elucidation of God.

the fickle nature of desire; cast into doubt, the young shepherd abandons his tribe and flock and literature to bury the corpse which was forgotten in the core of his spirit. . . putrid and unforgiving, the corpse is a burden which forever grounds him. the sheep are ill with the rotten stench, the tribe dismisses his efforts and labors as lost. . . a lost shepherd, a lost flock, a lost field, a loss indescribable. . .


Papyrus made of exotic woods. . . . . . . dead ink-blood, made from a coyote-mother’s moon-tears. . . .

an introductory running essay. . . . .

I am not a fast runner.

I believe that work and physical activity is natural, and is a natural pleasure of being. the pleasure of physical motion, of movement in any form, is the soul’s expression of joy in the clay of our bodies. i am an average runner, maybe a little less than average. i grew up playing soccer, which was 80% running/ athletic endurance with perhaps 20% ball handling skills (charlotte soccer in the mid-eighties was not yet an elevated sport.). beyond that i ran a few miles each week, and that slowed until running was a false memory behind a cloud of cigarette smoke in my early thirties. three years later i’m an active runner, running 4-5 days at an average of 25 - 35 miles each week.

i shot dope and drank from waking to passing out daily for fifteen years. i traveled from detox to rehab as my primary forms of recreation and socialization. physical activity fell into the background, though my sense of belief in physicality did not. it was only replaced by narcotics and alcohol, synthetic endorphins. . . . the belief in the physical experience, the corporal experience, was merely subverted to a drug experience. otherwise i served tables in a large, formal dining room, which forced a certain amount of swift activity weekly. that is, when i was employed.

so is it possible to retrain the body to excel physically, of its own strength and endurance, and to drive the endorphin production back into a normal range? is it possible to literally out-run one’s active addiction?

I am not a fast runner. I run for love of motion. I run in love of my body, it’s ambitions and achievements, its potentials and its limits. I respect my potentials equal to my limits. I run in love of music I sometimes enjoy, trees and bird-formations I frequently pass, the psalm of foot-falls and breath and the work of the body all in synch and whole in form & function. . . . . I am not a fast runner, but I run my angers out. I run my joys out. and then I savor the rush after a five miler, an eight miler, a thirteen miler, an occasional eighteen miler. . . . I run not for numbers, but for the journey of the miles. I run through landscapes and hopescapes and mindscapes and memory-fields and mathematics and painters’ histories and their work. I run through bach and mingus and mahler and modest mouse. I run through French and English and german and sometimes I run through zen koans and zen silence and digeradoos. I run through traffic exhaust and the frozen moisture of my breath and the windchapped lips and the drenching salt-lines on my clothing and shorts. I run through holidays and mornings and afternoons and I run with my son, sometimes with my wife, but mostly alone. sometimes alone in a crowd however. . . . .


Christmas day—running gear and a book, murakami’s what I talk about when I talk about running. . . . . went running, as necessitated by goals and gifts, though a brutal rain in a miserable wind in otherwise mild day brought an edge to the experience. . . . somehow hardcore, running at night, in good new gear, against wind and rain storm, four miles deep in determination. then thai food for dinner on a well-earned appetite.

jan 4 2010

2h44pm.

the winter has arrived in Wilmington, at least for a week. it is newly 2010 and my coldest run ever was yesterday, sunday, the day of my long run, with only 9 miles kicked out, but in a freezing air against a bitter Direct Wind that left me fearing frostbite on my face. just the other day I was mocking the cold gear at the local sporting goods store, especially the sports scarves, and there I was, on the far end of my loop, turning into the frozen tears of the unknown distance back home. so I just kept running, eastwood blurring then blinking and blurring again, as into mayfaire plaza I turned, thinking the road was windtunneling and running into the sun a few minutes may warm my face back up. but there the wind was again, like a scoffing demi-god, like a nemesis. and I ran. it was after all the only way to get home.

bitches and fugues.

running is a meditation painting music running cuisine. . . . . all connected. running connects the peripheral, the lost, the scattered. . . . . . paint fills in the maps legs discover. and legs will generate contour maps, will uncover internal and local networks simultaneously. . . . . really quite spectacular, even if quiet and private. . . . . of course, introspect is not always the case in a run. sometimes it is “good god how much longer do I have to run.” sometimes it is a pure mental blankness, sometimes static, sometimes colors, sometimes fugues of quietude or fugues of bach or fugues of odd memories that lap erratically against the back of the mind. . . the run is the vehicle of the mind’s transformative journey—a concentrated mental alchemy. legs and tired mind the lead of lab.

jan 10th. ran six miles and dreaded every step. I’ve hit a wall and it hurts to even pull a two mile lap. . . . . but of course, if I set up a two mile run, or a five mile run, come the last half-mile of the distance I am swift, effortless, deer-like. . . . but that ease only comes in the final blocks of the rounds: so a psychological block on physical exertion. . . . ? the cold weather is also defeating, even with my new cold gear.

jan 13th

Haiti was hit by a serious trauma last night. registering a full seven on the scale, the earthquake devasted the entire area of the capital. there is no way to count the deaths or to track the emerging corpses, but it is a start to say that all surrounding shanty-towns are rubble and many are but sloped graves now—children women men. . . . .

January 15th. a warmer day in upper 50’s and the beach was filled with runners, walkers, cyclists, and a few tourists. ran six miles following my eight mile run y’day and feel a bit spent. but the weave of other active bodies, their machines or lack thereof, their ipods and beer bellies and tights and brightly colored hats and the shimmer of sun on the seemingly new ocean and the intracoastal swaying in sailboat breezes beneath the bridges of Wrightsville beach and foot falls echo the miles approaching and receding and it is the final swoop of breath, almost warm but certainly January bitter on throat-lungs and the whole experience of running burns the diamond of the mind.

and I am not a fast runner, just a body moving ahead on both legs. . . . . I push my body, feeling air across cheeks and knees and hair falling heavier with sweat and I do not question the difference between jogging and running and I do not seek the approval of others, but I am enamored by the communal sense of the Public Run. . . . the public run. . . . while a bit bizarre, it occurs to us runners (many environmental and worried bout carbon footprints and now green races like the bi-lo marathon are more and more common) but we crawl into our vehicles and drive somewhere to run. we arrive and sweat and nod and stretch and drive back home to shower and sip hot cocoa or energy drinks but the irony is obvious to me: to drive to run. . . . . and speaking of green, now companies are putting out green shoes, meaning the soles (gels, insoles, inner shoe) are made of organic materials. this was, apparently, not at all the case before the new awareness. there are tons of various running shoes absorbing oil and milk and coffee grounds with diapers in every landfill of every populated area. . . . . . I had no idea. many donate shoes to causes and poor countries and even inner-city charities, and those are wonderful options, but still we drive to paved landscapes to pursue green activities in rogue-material shoes. . . . . and tech shirts and the little sweatshop hands that frequently make these clothes are a whole other issue. . . .

MVI. four miles with little man. . . .

a total of 63 miles this year as the eighteenth of January reached 63 degrees. . . . a wonderfully warm day with kyote and myself circling the neighborhood, Marley on the ipod (which hooks into a dual speaker system on the jogger stroller), pulling our strides long and easy on some “easy skanking” which ky enjoyed much. a run this saturday of 9.3 miles.

wednesday and January the twentieth and the southern sun bleaches the day into the pale-brick and graying asphault I love so much. . . . no run but a brisk jog-walk (powerwalk to the elite practitioners I suppose) with ky ‘round the block. . . . sometimes moving is enough.

Haiti experienced an aftershock today, eight days after the massive earthquake that has killed an estimated 200, 000 people, and once again brought the capital port-au-prince to its bony, dusty knees.

new iron and wine cd, as well as violent femmes original 1982 release on cd. both are enjoyable, runnable. . . . .