Tarmac Meditations

Tarmac Meditations #66: Urge for Goin’

October 23, 2011 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

A Joni Mitchell classic reminds Michael Lebowitz that running doesn’t need to be about running away.

“I get the urge for goin’/but I never seem to go” I heard it first from Tom Rush, but Joni Mitchell wrote it. Came from a prairie town where icy winds brought deep snow until late spring. The geese rose up and went south in “chevron flight” because they had the “wings to go.” Trapped inside, the town hunkered down. Rode it out. Some days, here on the winter flight path in the Northwest where I live, the chevron flights pass overhead, honkin’ and “a racin’ on before the snow”… and I get an urge for going, but at very long last, I have no need to go.

Photo Credit

Those of you with attention to detail may have noticed that Tarmac Meditations #66 and #67 were printed out of order. Life as A Human wishes to apologize to both Michael Lebowitz and his fans for this error. Michael’s editor promises to get a bit more sleep and add one more run to her week to keep her brain sharp in order to avoid future errors.

Morning Song

October 20, 2011 By Michael Lebowitz 12 Comments

She is not young anymore. One gets the impression that even when she was young she was not youthful, given to enthusiasm and giggling. The office politics of her place of work were more and more like her dining room table in her childhood home. There was yelling but far worse was the subterfuge, the jockeying for position, grant money and office windows, trips to Germany and other such – this was bloodsport and damn near killed her.

That morning she talked about how sometimes the thought of taking herself out came back to her. How odd, how final the phrase sounded coming from this quiet mouse of woman. She wasn’t built that way of course, she said. But she thought she understood it. There were scarves to knit and cakes to bake, everyone has something don’t they? Still, there is longing and fear, a bravado that belongs mostly to those who have fallen off the map. Her hands fly with surgical skill, the tapestries of her day emerge. She speaks slowly today, with what might even be amusement, at the thought of other people doing themselves in. As if. She asks one of the local musicians in the room if he has ever recorded an album he often jokes about, Songs to Hang Myself By. I’m working on it, he says, his voice getting lost in the uncomfortable laughter that starts and trails away. Almost as if it is only a matter of time, he seems to be saying.

This exchange came back to me earlier today when it became clear that it had been only a matter of time.

RIP JP Scofield

Photo Credits

Tarmac Meditiations #67: The Sound of Thunder

October 16, 2011 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

Michael Lebowitz ponders the early morning rain, hearing what matters and listening to the sound of thunder.

12/27
“Woke last night to the sound of thunder…” was on the iPod this morning. The rain and fog lay heavy in the valley and my running came slow. Despite the wrong turns and the mis-steps on the way to here, I get to run before daylight in the early morning rain. And yeah, I am still – believe it or not – workin’ on my night moves, only now they have something more to do with love and a sense of kindness. Go figure.

12/30
Went to get a hearing test this morning…apparently I have suffered no appreciable loss of hearing since the days when my mother and then my ex wife used to tell me that they were speaking clearly enough for anyone who was actually listening to hear what was being said. And that my friends was the good news and the bad news. When the tech told me I was very visual, I told her, Yeah, I hear ya.

Photo Credit

Tarmac Meditations #65

October 9, 2011 By Michael Lebowitz 1 Comment

Before his holiday run, Michael Lebowitz reflects on a time when Christmas represented simplicity and possibiltiy.

Christmas Eve 2010

Down the valley the mill makes monsters, rising smoke forms alliances with passing clouds. It all seems so simple really. Sky above, earth below and night time comin’ on. Put a log on the fire and hot tea in a cup. Read a good book and be at one with the stillness of it. Christmas is not really my holiday, but the world seems easier for the moment and the inner voices are quiet. A passing breeze brings raindrops.

December 25, 2010
I had my normal night’s sleep. Woke to find Santa doing my dishes at 3:00 AM, hour of the wolf. Coffee and toast by 3:20, followed by words and drifting. Bing Crosby is singing of a White Christmas. I’m thinking about my father. The song was from his time. It all seemed so simple then, so full of possibilities. Time to lace up, to run by the river. It wasn’t like this very often for me but it was this way once. Merry Christmas then. Merry Christmas now. Peace out.

Photo Credit:

Tripping

October 8, 2011 By Michael Lebowitz 3 Comments

Sometimes our lives are marked by events and sometimes events mark our lives. Michael Lebowitz writes about a Thanksgiving memory that has left an indelible footprint on his mind.

It was cold. Damn. I had just moved into a new house. Blue walls, Day-Glo mandalas, no legged couches and a general sense of the ending of the Age of Aquarius, mostly due to boredom and bad dope. The phone rang. It was Rainey, a friend of mine, conversant with cultural artifacts and deeply wounded in love to the accompaniment of endless Leonard Cohen songs, was still enamored of the great Canadian north and the idea of setting canoe upon blue lake amid rocky shore for the upcoming Thanksgiving Day weekend.Algonquin Park in the fall is cold and colorful. And foreboding. Not the heaven on earth of summer skies, drifting smoke, Northern Lights. But, more the Tom Thompson paintings of singular pines and rocky cliff, solitude and survival in every brush stroke. We put in at Canoe Lake, eight of us. We were an odd group, some us close to some and unknown to others. No matter, we headed up to the portage, moved across it, kept moving. Eventually we made it to Big Trout lake, made camp and set about the odd business of having to be at home in the woods as simple men and women.

The mist burns off the lake much later in the morning come October. The tripping of summer is replaced in the Fall by a heavier, slower rhythm, a beat that one feels in one’s bones, as if the water is hardening,the earth slowly closing down. There are few birds, the geese are gone, the horizon flat. A fire in the pit and some coffee. We watched as smoke swirled into mist; eventually everything fades, all conversation disappears, these strangers who are friends of mine sit silently in worlds of their own. It would go on forever, this sacred silence, as if in the temple of our dreams, knowing that our losses were made easier by the promise in another sunrise.

These days I run early. The other morning I hit a turning in the trail and those days come to mind; Rainey running flat-footed, easy stride, canoe aloft, pack bouncing on his back, the others running easy behind. I have traveled many crooked roads to get here but come early October every year I am for a moment or two on those rocky shores, sitting side by each with friends, watching the mist rise, drinking coffee, saying nothing, dreaming of the days ahead. Some of them are gone now, but deep inside where I live most days, I sometimes wish I had enough of something to bring that thanksgiving back just once more. I had no idea, none of us did, of what was waiting for us once the mist lifted and winter came, bringing with it as it must, the rest of our lives.

Photo Credits

« Previous Page
1
…
8
9
10
11
12
…
22
Next Page »