march 13 koan-poem.

bradford pears in bloom, bach's fugue for string quartet, the body in movement is a fugue and three miles becomes eight and its almost spring. . . the run, the body, the stride, this muscled gasp of form like a fugue, a layered rhythm of intricate little intelligences, converging where the distance is no distance but a continuum, a hemingway sentence sweeping towards a kerouac paragraph. . . the yawning fire of the chest, the pleasure of movement, the anticipation of spring and fragrance and easy beaches and bright musics. . . . spring is a run, is the joyful howl into a quiet neck of the woods where sleep wolves and where swells the earth, viridian green and wet.

Run for Ray 2012 and a nocturne.

i. 13 miles among friends and family, kyote's third birthday, the woods.  The collective aspects.

Run for Ray Trail Race is an absolute hoot, a grand gallivant of a mud-romp, and it's continued growth is a testament to the fun of running through the woods. Three options of distance, 3m 6m and 13m, brought a total of around 280 folks, with all the familiar faces organizing and maintaining things, keeping a smooth flow in the mass, keeping the cause in mind, keeping the vibe respectful of it's roots of charity. Mo, Mincher, B. Brandon, the Underhill family, the volunteers, all were magnificent- many thanks to those who assisted the race's fourth annual success.

The 5k was fast, the 10k was fast, and the 13 miler kicked super-quick with Clifford, Hatchell, Hustrulid, MA Smith, and many other local talents tearing up the course. I passed much of the run solo, sometimes isolated, but I kept falling back in queue to see runners ahead and behind. It was a great race, and half of a great race is a great course. . . the grand ol' trail.

The trails at Brunswick Nature Park unravel by the sleepy marshes and the black tar of town creek. Into the woods the black and red clays cut, leaning into electric tower swaths of land and striding by waterlilied ponds, cat tails, mountain bike paths. The trails for the 13 miler are mostly narrow single track, interspersed with a few fast shoots of gravel road spineing the park. Some trail sections are older and smooth, deeply grooved into the earth, but most of the trails are new, engineered and labored by SORBA and Coastal Land Trust volunteers. Puddles were frequent and feet were wet. Sections twist and carve into sandhill with switchbacks and serpentine modulations across banks of longleaf pine, hardwood. After two laps on the more familiar singletrack, runners were flagged (or bodyblocked, but that's a different story) into a new section of trail composed mostly of spongy, freshly upturned soil/sand, a few mudslide berms, and a fine drift through new land. This section went on for about 1.5 miles before it cut back into the gravel road to the sidewinder trail to bring the mileage home. The top runners finished in the 1h30m range, and they were all salty smiles and easy postures and kind words as I came through the finish chute. A positive group populates this race and that's why it's my favorite local event.

ii.  the personal.

Run for Ray, the inaugural 2009 shot, was my first trail race.  It was a 10k across blue clay mtb trails, cold and all new and balling with a bit of blood and a lot of endorphins.  I was immediately addicted.  The R4R still serves as an annual benchmark, and I'm proud of my performances and progress as a runner, glad for my continued enjoyment in running the woods. My gratitude is deep to have found trail running to pull my body out of the destructive habits.
2012 has kept my knee runnable and the trail felt solid beneath my strongest efforts. Kyote turned three years old while throwing rocks into mud puddles and running alongside people that choose healthy forms of recreation. Time on trails, time with family, birthday pizza and jokes, then a good shift at work: it all adds up to a good day.
It's what trail running is all about, communion and community.  The burning of body as it passes along earth, invigorated and enthralled, searching a larger concept, a larger sense of boundary, a deeper confidence, an expansion of self and self-image.  Pursuit of a coordination, a synchronicity, an alignment with something higher than oneself.  A kindness that is accomplished by good, healthy work. I'm not preaching, but most trail runs feel like a Sunday morning to me.

Hope to see you out there next year.

iii. rest.

Nocturne on a surly, a dozen miles deep on a february night, thinblade moon slicing clouds in a starless blanket of silver fray, run for ray 13 miler still detoxing outta bones but a mellow sway of a bicycle is the right medicine for right now.  quiet wilmington night under the buzz of street lights and the gravelly roll of tires.

Meanwhile its a stomach stuffed with good foods but a mind stuffed with miscellaneous, with noise and clutter, fragmented idea, lost lyrics of song, family concerns, work stress, body aches. . . the norm. for now, fresh air and the quiet clicking of geared pedals, a rejuvenation, a pause; the simple slow cadence. in pursuit of a decrescendo of the cacophony.  the work to soothe before a few paragraphs of dos passos and sleep.  sometimes you just have to bow out for a moment, collect yourself, exhale the stale light. 

blue clay, a run in winter, nostalgia tinted trails..

i.

something akin to kerouac when running a trail, hardclay slicing through thin pine zips and the leaden arms of old oak, just thinking and kicking by the rainblack muds collecting tiny footprints out of the woods, trailside threshers in small leaf-eruptions, just thinking and kicking, crossing a footbridge, meditating ricepaper layers of poetic continuum, untangling my years on this earth into a ragged narrative, thrusting towards a meaning, discovering and forgetting, a constant rebirth of breath, of falsity and faith, an image whether goya schnabel turner or richter, inhale and exhale broken by a moment's scramble of rootbruise misstep, arch growls and eases forward towards next stride. a brief beat lost and stalled, like a cursor at the end of a paragraph, blinking.

deja vu at the sound of a train - the familiar, a promise in the sweetness of america, a rustle through the woods, quiet (but for depth of breath), listening to that distant train, a corso whistle, a snyder grind of track, a set of solo legs burning winter out of muscle and mind, the wet smells of pine / oak, coltraine birds spilling notes into air, the strangely full february air and the coldest morning yet in winter, 28*F at blue clay and no one else around. . . freedom to recall the coffee-and-burnt-oil tire stores of concord, the kannapolis trains pumping canon mills into the market before the fadeout and blight, the paintings of foscoe bedrooms where grandfather mountain slept, salisbury bridges of the wpa bridge overlooking lugubrious morning trains. . . luxury of memory, the luxury of forgetfulness.  the loss of language is transcendence into body.  

ii.

Thoughts of batting cages with josue, his questions, a pier, a quiet intention perhaps. Then the accident. Years later, the driver of that fatal vehicle is found responsible for the accident. Rasha, contrition. The unbelievable irony of time, sometimes a moment requires years to reconcile. A lifetime, perhaps.

iii.

and tonight, after work, the fog of downtown wilmington smells like something out of a dfw short, a mix of burning diesel and tattoo ink. . . . a strange smell for a surreal foggy night with the cape fear lapping up misty light under a partial moon. A werewolf's desklamp. An undertaker's dull light.  a writer's distorted view of things.

Pauses and interludes.

Interludes of winter.

Yesterday, Sunday February 5^th, it occurred to me that i'm an artist. It wasn't a pretentious thought but a reclaiming. Like an unclouding of memory, a recognition. I could have easily thought My knee hurts or A coffee would be good or I need a jacket. You get it. . .

When i was young there was wonderment, drawing, writing, music. . . these things meant everything. I knew I wanted to create. I knew I wanted to paint and draw, explore bodies, figures, to use words, expel & reuse things, burn ideas into colour, excorcise, rework materials, refine a tangle of lines. Deconstruct or focus a myth. I wanted to falsify and clarify and deny. Whatever. I wanted to work and distill.

To kink a moment into something new. Alchemy of poverty. Alchemy of being a bit fucked up. The craving for new, invigoration, a mindmosh, break up the clusterfuck of modern consumerism and the mindbend of namebrand identity.  a freeing of the temporary towards something more human and ephemeral.

i am writing now because i do not want to write.  i am running tomorrow morning because i do not want to run.  but to engage the process is to initiate a momentum.

i.

Weymouth woods left an impression. Definitely. Left me with swollen maps of a bloodied hawaii across the arches of my feet, a bruise dark as a tattoo across the top of my right foot. Left me with a voracious appetite. Left me with a dose of runner's knee. It also left a burning desire to commit myself to another long race. Well, maybe more a run than a race, which brings us to semantics time.

Racing blurs too darkly the experience. Brings libido & ego into the mix. Racing implies the outside world and my relationship to it, when, especially in running, i'm just trying to beat the shit out of my own guts, my own legs, my own earth. I race from an emotional point that finds a powerful expression in the physical. Running is a private rage, a push towards something fresh. exhaustion, delirium, inspiration, endorphines. . . . running involves gratitude and transformation.

Transcendence, runner's high, fitness, the lie of endurance, these little mantra-myths pull a false lure when, ultimately, it's just the tenacity of the churn of legs that pushes through mileage and struggle and doubt. It is the same as not drinking, the same as not screwing a random, the same as not painting bad work. The choice to not pollute, to attempt to improve on the existing process, to layer nuance towards art.

A 100k trail race is a postmodern essai that requires no ink, no audience, no documentation.  my ego wants a public acknowledgment of the happening, but the run is completed, the journey ended. from there it just sentiment and nostalgia. Which this is. A confession, a recant, a howl.
chris burden would shit himself.

ii.

Winter brown leaf canoes across a redclay puddle.

3.5 miles of fair (meaning, comfortable) running. Top of right foot remains bruised. Much improvement in left knee. right hip is not cramping or caving. Calves are loose and feet are strong. Abdomen burns, bends too soon. When posture goes, the body follows. Lungs are tight and revolting. the dread of a run after a few days, hits first my respiratory system.
form serves simultaneously as the metaphor and the structure, the meaning and the armature.  mobic twists.  

a dog pounces a ghost in someone's backyard. Winter muffles haydn to a charcoal's drag across cotton duck. Schnittke and rothko is more the order of the day. Patches of melody and clangor. who was that composer i was thinking of earlier?  starts with a b. . . oriental composition. . . . shit. bar. . . bartok. 

iii.

Chorus of a thousand birds. February, groundhog day. A four mile jaunt across the neighborhood.

iv.

Sometimes: stop. Breathe. Feel Soul stir around bones. Air across legs, sun, bird song breaking through anxiety, fragments of memory, reggae beats.  pulse.

v.

language stumped. Syllables, broke In. puddled words. Puddles of stagnant mind.

artifacts of existence, tatters, shreds. . . false sail for a false boat-- a theater-set Life. . . patchwork of dreams and self-imaginings and failed paintings and failed selves and new legs and haunted mountainsides where melancholia settles like some distant mist that drapes spring buds to silent drowsiness.

So for now, i'm just gonna read coogan's history of the ira, google some work by mike kelley.   smear some conte across a toothed page. engage in instinct.  Unapologetic and still.


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

Mike Kelley died last week. He was someone who taught a generation to move freely within their gifts, even if they exist outside of the societal norms. He beat music to a pulp, laughing and mad and brilliant, and then beat paint and mediums to a new form. And he did so without fail. He defined new american aesthetics. He built something from his emptiness. a genuine punk, a man in full. Rest in Peace Mr. Kelley. 

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

Weymouth woods 100k race.

Fourteen loops across 4.5 miles of sandhill trails hacked up by knobby-gnarled pine roots, fast descents dog-legging offa' redmud ascents, water-carved cuts of earth and pine needled miles padding the distance ahead, and the endless need to disregard the screaming quads, the setting sun, the runner that has now lapped you twice, the left knee, the right calve, the lumbar tug, the cold hands, and the massive rush of physicality thrusting you forward. Disregard the ultrarunner concerns with kidney damage, cardiac swelling, hypnotania, and know that ultrarunning deals as much with stamina and endurance as it does pain management. And know you are stronger than pain as you shuffle like a cinderblock mistakenly thrown as a bowling ball. It is only mile 52 and you still have 10.58 miles to go.

I am already excited for the next one.

ii. schwag and logistics.

The rd, Marie Lewis, put a helluva fine shirt (a printed patagonia capilene LS) and a printed sports bag together. She also secured a chip system to record splits and count loops when you were incompetent to do so (which I was for about 80% of the run). Professional quality, top-shelf stuff from a fellow ultrarunner.

Two aid stations divided the 14 loops into halves, as Marie's husband manned the grills and stocked the main aid station, where vegans and carnivores alike had their fill of options. (If you starved during this ultra, its 'cause you cracked your head open on the trail between aid stations and slowly succumbed. . . . no other excuse was valid. The food was downright luxurious-- especially the chicken noodle soup.) The frostbitten aid station in the middle of the trail loop offered rotating options, including peanut butter smores, pizza, and some of the best grits around.  A well-marked course, good schwag, good volunteers, good management, and a full day in the park makes for a great 100k.

iii. The basics, the course, the folks.

77 runners suited up for the ultra. mtc (mangum track club) was a major player, as was rfh (runner from hell). the calender put it on a saturday january 14^th, and the starting temperature was a wintery upper 20's. A brief opening, a passecaglia of about 1/3 mile, allowed the runners to position themselves before entering the narrow trail where we would spend our day. The first half of the trail sort of leaned into some 4x4 steps carved into a hill and then slithered down a soft decline for a mile or so before tacking up some pined slopes and cutting into a narrow single-track which hovered above marshland. This area was so still and quiet, a tranquility point. A few foot-bridges kicked you across a gurgling brook and deposited you back at the foot of an incline which shot up towards an abandoned platoon, or a home, before eventually edging back around to skirt the road. 

Coming down into a tunneled area of woods was the sign “3 minute hostel,” and a chunk of my race was dominated by this sign. 

A.) they kept moving the sign. Slightly, but they moved it. 

B.) was it mile 3? was it a 3 minute pause? Was this the midpoint or a slightly advanced position, or neither. both. . . . awwhhh hell.

But this AS group made my run work-- their grits (sans buerre s'il te plait), and the generous portions of hot cocoa spiked with dark coffee kept me in the calories for the last 18 miles. If the loops were a single sine curve, the three minute hostel would be the -1 point from which the curve goes back into positive zone. a point to start over and invigorate.

The second half was the gnarl, continually wrecking me with sharp upshoots stepped by roots and tight turns, weighing against knees, hips, the sides of swelling feet, the arms moving and sculpting balance across the strides. The straighter passages, the few & the cruel, deceived the inner-competitor into accelerations, pushing long kicks through brief lunges of red clay hills, dodging the skree-clogged rivulets and collapses of sand and stone and pine-root steps, and then quad-busting declines that would make Kupricka a heel-striker.

The final bend, which I kept looking for well in advance of its appearance, allowed a view of the weymouth woods park building and museum. It was a morale boost to see that geometric form lift from the tree-line. You then jam up the gnarliest part of the course, a steep ascent of mixed steps and roots, everything being just spread out enough to force leg-lunges to clear necessary distance, or force a tight-gape powerhike.  either way you were getting burned up at the joints.  then came the final hill to a curve that brought you into the home chute and the main body of event.

All of these terrains and their exclusive challenges served to beat a body up, to pulp down a runner's guts, back, neck, legs, ankles, and to render them a jellyful thing lurking as a number on a leader board kept by the aid station. It was enthralling, a perfect combination of challenges.

Again, I can't wait to sign back up.

iv. my experience as a runner doing his first 100k.

I had never run beyond 32 miles.  my long runs during training were 2 to 3 hours, with a higher concentration on back-to-back mileage.  but my legs felt strong enough for the distance, and fast enough to compete on a racing scale.
Nutrition was a concern, but I had heed, gu gels, and a pretty good stomach, as well as some extra padding. As far as pace, I started conservative, and then realized I was running well (within a 1/2 mile), and I really wanted to keep the lead pack in my sights.  I began passing clusters of folks who were watching me with a quiet wisdom, a wise reserve. I wanted to keep a competitive and aggressive pace, for my level of running, and my garmin read 8min- 8min30s miles for the first 25km. I felt strong and determined as I reached my marathon point, though I thought 3h45min was a little extended from my goal time. Reaching 50k, I was around twenty minutes behind my gator trail 50k time, which I thought I would match in my current fitness. Privately, I thought I might better the time actually.  Slight buzzkill.

Middle miles are my weak point: there is little to anticipate but more running. Reviewing your accomplished miles does little to encourage; everything goes grey and melancholy.  Factory miles, shift miles, inattentive and grinding.  Whether a tuesday ten miler or a sunday 18 miler, my psyche is the same. But when my left knee went tweaky about mile 40, I was even more lost. This was when I considered the possibility of a drop.  My good friend Mark Long (and a helluva runner himself-- besting the Boogie twice and killing it across many marathons and ultras) recommended ibuprofen. I was wary, but after forcing out a painful powerhike across the total distance of a loop, I took his advice. Then a fellow runner offered me an S-Cap, repeating, “don't eat the brown acid.” my drowsy, somewhat defeated mind appreciated his humor, even if it took about two miles to do so. the combination of ibuprofen and restored electrolytes (ultra-ball (patent pending)) got everything rebalanced and runnable and off I kicked to clear some good loops out, trying to beat the sundown/moonup, try to reclaim some time.  Strangely, I ran alone much of this middle distance.  I rarely encountered someone, and when I did it was momentary and peripheral.  My quads cemented up around mile 54 and running slacked to a horror-hike, hands on quads on the uphills. My head was throbbing. I had long ago 86'd the ipod, and launched mental diatribes against anything that crossed my mind. Charlie Sheen had nothing on my rage as I kept jogging awkwardly through the woods to mark one more notch out. Night fell (enter another totally new experience:  nighttime trail running), and my headlamp was surreal and fantastic and I jogged/ran 60% of my final two laps in good spirit with an appreciation of the life-experience. I tumbled once, and that was in the last 100 yards of the race. A combination of nighttime running, fat roots on a steepish ascent, tired legs, and an effort to rush to the finish resulted in a fine allfours type roll. . . . no harm. My finish was 11h34 mins, a seventh place finish and a first for mangum track club, which earned me two fine pieces of pottery by a local potter and ultrarunner, Irene Russell. The time was enough to be proud of while also leaving a great gap for improvement. For a premiere 100k, I am pleased.

Ultimately the race was superb, while the actual work of the thing was neither good nor bad, just grueling in the middle miles. For sure, running 100 kilometers on trailed earth is something of a bitch. Meanwhile my body is still reconnecting the fissures and tears and thoughts and reabsorbing the swelling. My feet are no longer alligatorish, but I still have some bruising across the top of my feet from my shoe laces. My lungs are less fatigued, and my abdomen seems to be relaxing again. my shoulders feel like i got a beatdown and my energy-level is still off, but I can honestly say I have ran 62.58 miles. And regarding weymouth woods 100k, I can honeslty say i will do it again.

 

Bravo to the volunteers, to the organizers, to the cooks, to the runners, to the support crews and families, to the dogs, and to the park rangers who made this all work. Marie Lewis was extremely supportive and positive-- she brought a good vibe to her race.  Thanks to Mark Long, whom I would readily hire as an ultracoach if I weren't too far away. Thanks to my wife (who took all of the above pictures also-- quite the photographer!) and my little man and my dog maya for showing up and cheering me every loop, and for not laughing at me, no matter how much snot or pizza or confusion or hate was on my face. And thanks to the higher power that put me in a body that can accomplish such a thing, without chemicals and madness, and who lets me discover the joy in running this great golden earth.

Weymouth Woods 100k Trail Race, a preface and an aesthetic arguement.

Zeno's paradox, zendo of sand and long-leaf pine, the final passages of a blog.

I've been immersed in a strange, echo-layered existence of deja vu for a few weeks now. Nostalgia and reflective pause filter my thoughts sepia, washy technicolor. . . life like a rediscovered, bentcorner photograph, a bending into the past, a begging for a younger time.  its the paradigm of winter, really; distorted & false. sentiment and grovel.  a coffee-stained life, overexposed, overanalyzed.. . . like an artist working an image. . . . memory peels back the layered grounds, grinds down pigments, distorts contours, extracts an essence and makes prominent certain details. In spaces where a face once smiled towards a bird feeder, or a black bike leaned on a boat, there is only a textured-vinyl background yellowing. A skew of the facts. Exhaustion.  Anyway.

Running through the woods of cabarrus county, chasing the tiny sounds of snakes and birds, following the anemic splashes of five-mile creek. . . a filthy creek, but it meekly trickled, sulfuric and beer-canned, unabated. filthy was just the way the creek was, neither good nor bad to a child's understanding.  Water.  A place to play. We would swim there on occasion, a small fish or black snake swimming by. Bamboo thickets. Red clay. Roots like mad hands reaching out of the steep river banks. The long shadows swallowing the thick leaves that never seemed to decay. sweet oak scent. The cracking and shuffling of my steps.
It is probably in those woods that my love of running began. I spent hours in those woods as a young boy.  Solitude and exploration, the prominent traits of a runner or an artist, are embedded here.  From my love of being in the woods came a love of hikes, then the freedom to run down a mountain, an intoxicating thing, a self-reliant act, a collaboration of earth and body. My love for running down a mountain remains, but with age, you also learn to run up the mountain, to savor the work. To build on the work.

Fast forward to the years beyond cobblestoned cannon village, the smokey seats of gem theater, smells of axle grease/ sweat at earl's tire, shotguns trained on dove in rural concord fields, the wild splash of catfish at paul's lake, the doppler roll of summer halfpipes, virginia amtrack stations and the phillips & the hirshhorn, prague and west berlin, stravinsky and picasso, hemingway and modigliani, coltrane & mingus, a midnight collapse in a greensboro club, lost paintings, college flunk outs, strippers in atlanta with an armful of ecstacy, deaths and births, mushrooms of florida, loves and loss, farming tomatoes in the mountains, strolling galleries in asheville, ER and ache, the stomachknots of hate during intervals of detox, various other failures, various other happenings. . . the tragic magic of existence. Insomniac eyes that bled and craved; eyes turned inward, anger turned inwards. Life turned inward. Eyes riddled with fear, anxiety, panic, lost breath, the vicious collapse of reason. Paint, a whole love, a Love Intact, a boy that once gave freely, that feared little, that laughed heartily, that embraced. a boy like any boy:  nothing special but the fact of his existence, which is an absolute diamond-marvel.
 

But here approaches a culmination of work and love and life with a trail race of 100km, a horrorshow of struggle and a series of miracles equivalent to anyone else's life.  ultimately, the 100k is the thrust of my belief, it is a duchampian happening, a kinetic installation, a self-portrait.  an alchemy and a restoration.

I fully intend on finishing, I would like to make between ten and eleven hours, and I would like to continue running after a few days of rest. my mind reels the distance into a zeno paradox, and if I can stay in the act of the stride, the mile-to-mile part of it, the loop-to-loop, if i can sustain a belief in the mental/spiritual journey behind the musclework (which is only the vehicle, like linseed oil or a train or an instrument), and remain in the act of enduring, then I will finish a 100 km trail race.

in conclusion, to run is a very natural thing.  to paint is to compose, to embellish, to dramatize.  art is a sociological-psychological thing. myth exists in these two acts, but at very different levels of the work.  to engage in the more primal act is more certain an honest labor. and running is primal, innate, instinctual, a gut-level burn.  running is a communion of body and ground, of mind and legs, of distance and silence. painting is a soloist act, a zarathustrian trapezist. art is a propaganda (especially in a contemporary art market) while running is a meditation.
for now, i prefer running, though i still enjoy the oiley dry drag of a charcoal vine as it bites black into a thin layer of zinc-white gesso. meanwhile, wherever the burn goes. . . to weymouth.

2012, weymouth woods 100k, the aleph.

i.  a series of loops, like a 100k.  

The body, the mind, the soul, the collective operates in cycles, layers of cycles, cycles of cycles. . . a World of habit and rhythm. And, most days, I mosh into that patterned existence with a heave/ho and a belief that my labor matters. a faith preserves & propagates further effort.  a momentum drives the body forward. Be it stillness or movement, the body internalizes habit, learns and adapts, becomes its routine.  thus, the running shoes, a notebook, a dose of music, a few starchy strides down a trail before the loosening.

sometimes, the collapse. The sag, the lag, the lull.  and for now, i feel tired.  enter the taper period of the weymouth woods 100k.  extra sugar in my coffee, a gravity on my bones, a brood.

i operate best by instinct and momentum.  i train (run, paint, write) to build a collaboration of instinct and momentum, and by repetition i sharpen my instinct and strengthen my base.  i progress towards an efficient exertion (whether in paint or language or trail). the body is a momentum, subject to itself, a god-form, a sovereign diety. when the run feels natural, when a mark falls easily, a zen inkbrush moment, when effort is impulse and reward, then you have the core of the work down.  then, you have the alignment. its an aleph of existence when a body cuts through the woods in its own strength, a communion between a runner and the earth, a primitive dance, the pursuit of a new language, a mark. 

To be present in the body's habits, to move as life moves, elusive and calligraphic, and to be engaged- even in routine- is the trick. 2011 was a fine year, thus 2012 begins with the same ideas: to get up, check my head, kick some miles, slow the angst, boil out some pigments and language and nurture the belief that the acts of life, as a continuum, as a narrative, will one day prove to be a coherent form. Otherwise, the vacuum of an existential conundrum: nothing but vast, void inquiry. pernod and cigarette whisps across sartre's nauseau.  i need action:  distillation of act, a distillation by Act.

it is really only when i succumb to easy running, complacency, the Glaze, that i bust my ass on a trail.  if i am tired, but conscious, i slow down to allow for sluggish footwork.  but if i am mindlessly milling, eventually, the ground will steal a kiss.  this has happened several times in the previous month to teach me valuable presence of mind.  it normally follows the thought, "i am running well today."  concentrate on the trail and the body will follow; concentrate on the body and you lose the meaning.   

Kicking. A word of several meanings (maybe) but I can really only focus on two. Kicking in street terms is derived from the involuntary flinches of the legs that comes from a narcotic withdrawal. The leg muscles cramp and ache severely, causing a kicking reflex. The stomach muscles and the heart muscles also constrict and spasm- all the muscles of the body revolt, a horror-bask. the gruel.
the other use of the word is running. Running is a cleansing act. A meditation in movement, a transcendental thrust, time that forces the mind into a nexus of awareness and response, faith and function. Running forces the coordination of mind and body, a belief in their collective aptitude.
running a trail is an act of self-confidence and faith and fitness, all conspiring through a funnel of physicality. 

much libido in the early miles-- craving followed by satiation-- there was massive drive and the knowledge of body, exploratory burn, the capture of touch, layers of mouth and breath, fever, primal moutheyes, hunter ears, heat of pulse, gravity, a soul cascades through a body, an eternal hush, the final limp comfort.
there was a newness of flesh and a celebration thereof. 
in truth, sexiness falls from later miles.  peels back like chafe.  libido devours its own suffering minutea and digests it towards a solitary echo, a vague thought.   the sex longs but there is no more body.
it is a common theme.

ii.

To completely reinvent myself.. . . the refashioning might include a buell motorcycle, a glock sidearm, and a wolf named wittgenstein. maybe an obsession with old coins and the alamo. i would register my own constellations.  i would consider the weight of a pillow, how it affects a dream.  i would grow a rat tail.  i would not bother running trails in sub-30 degree weather. i would find the absurdity in running 100k on a trail sufficient to avoid such an endeavor. i would meanwhile cruise on my steel horse and laugh into the wind and chase bears with wittgenstein, referring to the capture and wrestle as a tautological process.

But as it stands, ten days out from my longest race ever, the weymouth woods 100k trail run confronts a dull, tired, flat-minded runner that has little concept of the new year beyond that trail race. the miles have collected like cataracts across my eyes.

iii.  the present.

training eases into a taper. a full taper is not my body's deal: lethargia stones me if i completely stop running. so the runs shorten, slow a bit, switch to nontechnical surfaces, a way to push blood around the legs, keep the momentum of movement in the muscle.  pedaling the surly through a january afternoon becomes a primary exercise, a pleasurable break.
meanwhile, the mind accelerates into doubt, arrogance.  but little more preparation can be accomplished.  it is meat and bone and the results of the conditioning. taper is an easy time and a hard time.

What the body has on race day is the question, the big culmination. marley, wyclef, culture, kronos, dead kennedys, rage, schubert, bach, goat rodeo. nutrition is settled to include gels, fruit, electrolyte beverages, pb&j, protein bars, trail mix. Coffee. things are in place.  i have envisioned later miles, new world miles, and tried to adjust my head for them.  i have a spotlight and a pair of tights.
i have considered tom simpson. 
For now, I am tired and watching kyote play with trains and flash cards.  its 10 in the morning.  the cycle must be free to move, must be free to layer and build and burn.  the act must remain pure, must have weight, ground & gravity, like a painted figure, like a late beethoven fugue, like a passion. there will be myth and collapse and renaissance. a self-devouring.  for me, weymouth is more than a physical run, its a mental/spiritual process.