my first entry, from three years ago. an ego retrospect.

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. . . . .

"This may be difficult."  

Paintings by Jay Edge.

Hosted by The Upstairs Gallery at Caprice Bistro, 

November 15th 2012 through January 2013. 

 Opening will be held on Weds. November 15th, 6pm - 9pm.   

a trail run in october.

Juking through the trail, the trees & roots of blue clay, its not fast but i'm working, running, midmorning october, orange leaves under long blue shadows, jarred horizons push and pull, merge and blur like a rothko, hips shift in quick tag of earth and eyes root to the trail, the mud-spine switching back against ankles & knees, lumbar and shoulders, and i'm aiming for a rapid cadence that smooths the work, shortens the stride, less jar to the kicks, a smooth roll of thrust/lunge, thrust/lunge, and i'm keeping the shoulders rolled back, neck is long and throat is open, breath steadies to fill the chest, the mind is even and quiet and tuned in.
thin layers of breath move with heat from chest into muscle, exhale steam, a fugue of moves, symphonic.

it's my creative act to articulate a trail well, to immerse myself in that work, to grind down the whole being over a distance, to emerge from a passage of earth exhausted, quiet, fulfilled, its an act of artful expression.  this is where i find my core, in raw nature, this is my honest primal place... when running, the world's noise can straight fuck off, fall away, dead october leaves fueling a fire... when i run, i can burn the world from the inside out, my own private anarchy, my own graces and brutalities.
catharsis and meditation, the falling of leaves, the nature that shares an infinite spectrum of moods, the rothko-thin layers of thanatost and libido, glazed into a whole form of a man, an illusion possibly, a body, succumbing to nothingness and everything, moving through it until the bones fall away from the soul.

A Run in the Uwharrie Range.

...in pursuit of some moving ecstasy, in liberation of mind and spirit, as a private act of rebellion & anarchy, there is a run, something primitive in the act of running a trail. it was time to move through some of god's good land on the momentum of my angst, on the power of legs, on the remaining keenness of mind and near the land of my birth, the familiar rolling pastorale of my formative years, is a range of mountains that carry my youngest memories.  they carry the cathartic and carefree remembrance of running the wooded acres behind my grandparents house, a boychild moving in new earth. it feels good to be back home, in the piedmont of nc, good to be in the ancient land of the uwharrie.

i.  the medicine: a few hours of solitary running in a gnarly stretch of woods where i can feel self-reliance, where i can move into intuition, in the movement of the soul, where i can ascend and descend mountains that carry the history of their birth and formation and the archaeology of use, where unknown generations of Indians ran on leather soles chasing animals and children and women and each other, not knowing the game was timed.  to fall into that trail, wholly immersed, you mark the blaze and fucking run until the breath is lost, the body is wrung out with salt crystallizing on the bellies of muscle and the vision blurs and the landscape fades to a deeper space, a world beneath the mind, at a bodyless vortex, mud of body and mud of earth, river of mountain, river of body, cuts of blood and bone and the primitive stoneface steep against october mountain, clashes of body-wood through narrow chute of limb and branch, endless spiderweb entanglement (like a beekeepers hat on head), the pale green mosses of rockface thrust, the diagonal cuts of limestone and the irregular face of granite, low pyramids of white quartz like some ephemeral timekeeper, the sienna and ochre carpet of fallen leaves and the secret surface beneath, a rare splash of yellow-orange on a branch, wheatgrasses brushing leg in low meadows, the dull light beneath a still thick canopy of hardwood leaves, the undulating horizon from which streaks of sun pour down to splash trail bright, a strobe effect of light and shadow, slope of space, the ever bending horizon the everbending body the jut of leg and the pistonhammer feet ache on stone protusion and the gut churns at the prospect of being waterless and the mind just burns on, an endless light fueled by a Divine spark that exists here, in this space, on this trail, in this mountain, and is, for this moment, Yours. an absolute moment of Existence, an absolution.

(ranger warned me that "the snakes are out right now, moving, and the rattlesnakes are moving, seen a few in the past two weeks, rain brings 'em out, and they are ill-tempered, yeah, ill tempered right now...be careful")
... and to be IN the acoustics of the motherearth, to be present and alive in the land... had driven 3 hours to arrive here, had driven anxious and energized, music blaring the whole way, and here was the quiet of ancient mountain woods, containing me in my traverse, shirtless with thin-soled shoes, two bottles and a sweat-blotched map that was (literally) dissolving with each paused orientation, a thunderstorm moving in from the northwest, black and bleak, but the day so far was sunny and clean-aired though the trail was puddled with overnight rain and the rocks and downed trees were as slippery as polished cement beneath a pickup truck oilpan and that ideal weather ended two and half hours in when the sky shot down raindrops, the size of golf balls, a cool but muscled/fisted rain, and i found a service road to runrunrun back through a hunting camp and up/down until being deposited back at the parking lot.
aww man & oh boy! soul was revved and language and cherokee and twombly and the rip of land beneath the kick of foot restored the ache to be alive, the will to be a part of this lifething, the mad courage to go forward and to do.  proud to be here, alive, and able to offer something, if only a body and the language of legwork.

ii.  and thirty minutes up the road came a clearing of clouds and morrow mountain state park and i decided on a quick loop across fall mountain trail where fire had devoured part of the landscape and left strange charred forms, previously tree trunks, now a surreal display of natural sculpture, and somewhere two miles in i lost the trail and descended a rocky scramble to the shore of Pee Dee River and, realizing my errant direction, backtracked, pawed up the scree past what looked like a dismembered still and back onto the red mud/blackened soil surface and craggly oaks and the flat rocks like stacked iron pans reaching off of the shallow summit and ended that run with a sink-bath before heading to salisbury for a thai meal.  all in all, a 17 mile day in the uwharries, three hours of good wholesome running...

iii.  and thats that.  and what is that?  an exjunkie kicking miles in ancient wilderness earth, shirtless and proud and burning the body open... the power of movement, the power of body: a grateful thrust of his entirety.

labor day run in remnants of isaac.

... gotta get behind the mule again, shoulder plow into hard earth, bend to the wind and start the work of miles and pigment.... early morning run, grayblack day like soot dusting dawn, the torso arches into moderate pace, the heart leads, a pulse feeling fires of late summer, coals of burning lungs, fatigue in the launch of leg... an arrhythmic event of muscle versus mass... when, now, like a promise broken or fulfilled, storm collapses onto land, the vast flat land, bending on asphalt, empty windows of resting homes become shallow and pale... rain applaudes itself as a bleak black horizon pushes down on earth... shoes absorb puddles to swell heavy, eyes sting, lips collect the rain, shoulders and back cool and the body opens, kicking fluid into inhale, feeling length in stride, a body in push, and the back arches like a bow, an arrow of effort jamming into the blind courage of distance... regardless of mindcloud, the questions, despite clouds of exertion rolling through mind and muscle, riding blood, the histories of this moment building like a cacophony in mind.... the continuum of habit is a history to be admired.... bending back tall as pushing heart into rain, churning legs, churning wind and rain, fury of it all, something staged or hollywood with lightening and thunder, naked chest pounded by tiny fists of rain, the body's gravity, the breathlessness, the soul heavy in solitude of the rain run, the ridicule of such an act, raw arrogance and fuck it all-ism, the angst of the legs. . . . fury of it all, solitude of it all, kicking like a mule in a storm-rattled stable. . . . and then the paint, the paint is dry and the runner is wet, irony... the vigor of yearning, the proof of form, the time-starched hopes of charcoal and burnt sienna and red oxide, ochre and cerulean, the burning of a figure silhouetted by rain and angst and cloud, raging against apathy, charred lung and brilliant whiteheat light... a clay sag in the rain. . . . the work is the love, the work is the meaning, the work is the nexus.  the work is the bones in this heavy sack of clay doubt, the work is the pursuit... paint, ecstasy, illumination, equanimity... work is anything that brings you love.  work is the proof, is the gift, is the expression of god.  

Kunga Yoga, Kunga Running. (still in edit, but whatever.)

As cosmic collaboration would have it, I found myself registered for a 220hr yoga teacher training program three days before the commencement of a three week immersion program.  New to the art and practice of yoga, my connection to the power, the medicine & synergy, the joyful work of disciplined movement, all was aligned sufficiently to alter life-rhythms (my own and many others) and embark upon the journey.  Welcome to Kunga Yoga Teacher training at Shell Island Resort in Wrightsville Beach, NC.

Kunga Yoga is a yogic belief-system central to Wilmington Yoga Center, the hosting studio of the ytt school.  At the philosophical core of Kunga Yoga is the belief that Yoga is a service, is an act and offering of compassion, and that practice is an opportunity to reconcile. Kunga yoga believes that everyone is a yogi, that yoga is accessible to every body.  In serving our bodies in asana and pranyama, we build a personal strength that can translate towards a communal power.
Kunga yoga brings a monthly theme to its classes, and that theme is introduced into each Kunga class, often connecting the category and flow of postures.
Kunga yoga classes donate a percentage of proceeds to a charity, annually chosen. The young girls of the Home for Hope in India are 2012's recipients, and there is a trip organized at the end of the year.


i.
Rather than write anecdotes and vignettes describing the three weeks of ten hour days of practice, posture work, reading, studying, refueling and resting (rich days my friends!), I persuade you to check out a class or a workshop (www.wilmingtonyogacenter.com for those in the area).  Yoga practice is a transformative, expansive, magical thing, and every yoga experience can be a gift to yourself and others. 

ii.
Yogic philosophy is a direct complement to kicking out distances.  Burying the mind in the solitude of miles makes yoga feel more elegant, more nuanced, more subtle.  Braiding in both, in yoga as in running, is the idea of space, openness, breath, heat, and, most importantly, a strong communion with the earth beneath you as well as the clay that composes you.   Clay and breath and light, light that emits various levels of heat.

iii.

I came to yoga from a spectrum of injuries.  Yoga was a gentle, a healing or nurturing meditation; a preventative, in-the-meantime deal. Soccer stretches.  I quickly learned that yoga can be equally physical, massively challenging to strength and mind and endurance. Forgotten areas of my body struggled with basic movement & patterns of movement. Tensions poured through muscle thicker than blood. Slowly, a new body, a waking body, merges into breath through posture, distills mind into focus, a calm, engaging meditation towards inner-stillness,.  It is a process, a gradual process.  A journey.

Yoga contains running and running contains yoga.

Moments in my trail running have a sacred lucidity.  Likewise, I have fallen deep into my body and inner-bodies during shavasana, exploredvast mad spaces during cycles of surya namaskar B... felt fires in core and legs while holding warrior 3... yoga and running are acts that open the body to new aptitudes, open the heart to new experiences, nurturing a healthier, happier person.  Both stabilize the body and mind.  Each is an action rooted in gratitude.

iv.
I think all creative actions can be an ascetic.  Drop labels and the cultural models, let fads fall away, minimize the noise of a thing, transcend to your own expression of an act and search out the ascetic root.  Find a mindful connection to the act.  Sculpture, masonry, cooking, writing koans, cleaning, story telling, sketching a rock, skipping a rock, reading, meditation .... in every creative act is an ascetic potential.  More to this later...

v.
Yoga, the physical elements (only two of the eight branches of Yoga), is a meditation that moves through postures and patterns of breath.   Asana and pranyama are powerful practices, but I would extend Yoga to include running, cycling, swimming, jumping rope, dancing, eating, having sex: anything can move towards a yoga-based practice.   Anyone can find some form of yogic practice and celebrate that immediate place. Start here and now by noting the here and now.  Breathe into the three spaces of your torso's cavity, filling the belly, expanding the ribs, lifting the heart, and then pouring that breath out mindfully from the belly. . . . yoga dirgha breath.  A mindful nodding of the head, a roll of the lower spine,  scorpion pose, walking to the mailbox, any mindful movement can capture the spirit of yoga.  Everyone is a yogi, and it does not require a mat to find your yoga.  to move consciously, to feel the weight of one's body on the support of an earth, to yoke the love and heat and strength of a challenging posture, to remember the steadiness of breath and the awareness of body and mind, and then to project that as an energy into our relationships and community, it is an offering. movement as prayer. an exalted, basic Act.

We do not learn yoga so much as we excavate the yogi within us.

**********************************************************************

Interestingly, noted Yogini Sharon Gannon argues that asana does not mean posture, but translates as "seat."  Meaning a stable connection to the earth, to the processes of the earth, to the dynamics of a moment, to being still and conscious, reaching from within with compassion.

The history of surface. Approaching summer.

Got some New Seeds shaking around the seedbag. Ink on rice paper. Language charged fresh, muscle charged flesh. Sandalwood and ts eliot. Shostokovich, holy lands, projective verse & newspaper excerpts, transfer drawings and vast hee-hawings. . . monotypes, titles forgotten, brokenspine books, libraries empty in the rain, l.a. rose gardens, ecstasy in the vein in north decatur & the cold fear of speed versus the lax heat of dope, coastal miles and the whispering sand of lowtide runs, the push of body through heat and fatigue and doubt. . . . sexual tension or creative tension, an energy source, like the clangor of rachmoninoff, schoenberg, the terse verse of buk, a fullmoon thing, ebb and flow and oxbow.  

i am a freerange mind: Uncaptured, mostly. A trek covering some 38 years of wondering, wandering. Jesus. Je suis. Sex and creativity and running are all just a hunter's instinct. A freudian exertion.

Imagination and sovereignty. Let collapse the constructed mind and quit clasping the umbilical culture that binds. Burn into dance. Pour into intuitive existence and be enraptured by what waits. Amaze yourself. You ARE a phenomenon. Imagine, cultivate, ruminate, be sovereign. Desire something beyond yourself.

Dance your spinning world around, rumi, gibran, st. paul. . . whoever gases the grand ideal.

ii.

Palettes sit newly sealed in white, previous layers of colour covered in strange geography. (I get lost in the narrative of topography, the history of surface.) The dried puddles of once-pigment, ridges of brushes, weight of touch and drag, the valleys where mixtures were diluted, exhausted. Now white. Titanium white. The total of all light and its pigments. A historied topography absolved of specific struggles. Clean. Start new. Spin out of your dwelling, your rut, your denizen, your mindnumbness.

iii.

A coastal run of 14 miles, an unrushed&freelyworking form kicking sand through a earmix heavy on modest mouse and marley. Dehydrated launches of legs lose power, cramp, pull into stomach like a band weakening around a wrap of papers, like a scroll.  The muscle and mind and desire unravel to a lost momentum, the settling of blood in feet and swelling and discomfort and the final fallaway of mind from the work at hand. Meditation becomes something ugly and debased; the act works against the focus. No longer a positive, but a mind full of suffering, the escape of which was the reason for running in the first place. End of a cycle, pause of a process, like knowing that a drawing is complete. Hit the garmin and breathe.

iv.

Form that is not simple, but elegant and ancient. Ephemeral. But above all, Elegant. Miles' sketches of Spain, Stravinsky's rites of Spring, drums and the slap of feet. Ink on rice paper. Sole on dirt. The nimble seriousness of this life is best expressed not in contours, form, layers of language, but in the body. The calligraphy of the erotic, the powerful bending of the yogi's body, the armature of mind in synch with body in synch with trail that runs like rain down a mountain. The cadmium red-orange burn of quads. The dance of the original hunt. The gasp that is a hymn, an Om, a settling of chaos into rhythm. Illumination by way of the physical:  sometimes you must push the body to quieten the mind.  

Let the madness drive.