Tarmac Meditations

Tarmac Meditations #111: Notes From A Nightmare

February 10, 2013 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

A Six Word Story

Are you clean? Totally. Like Pilate.

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Tarmac Meditations #110: Roll on You Rollin’ River

February 3, 2013 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

There are days when my running is not about running at all. I went out this morning to listen to Dylan’s new album, Tempest. I really only listen to music intently when I run, especially if the music is new to me. In one song, “…In silence there he waited for/Time and space to intervene…” A little further along, “The orchestra was playing/songs of faded love…” Me and Mr. Dylan gettin’ our mileage before sunrise…been doing that for a very long time; we’re gonna keep at it for a while longer on account of “I ain’t dead yet my bell still rings/I keep my fingers crossed like the early Roman kings.” ( I get some part of that..the rest just sounds good.) The real thing is, some people who write go to read Keats, or Kesey, or Mailer, or Doctorow or Atwood in order to get their directions to their own private stash of personal words…inspiration is part of it but so too is being surrounded by the rhythms and constructions that made the reader want to be a writer. For me it is Dylan, and Van Morrison, Lyle Lovett and Guy Clark, John Lennon and Marvin Gaye. So I light out, put the headphones on and go to the river of words that will take me where the takin’ needs to go. Roll on you rollin’ river. Roll on.

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Taramc Meditations #109: Freedom Is

January 27, 2013 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

It was cold yesterday. Winter goddam cold. The MacAss50, a fun run of various distances is in the books. A lot of locals showed up, the TrailRunner Magazine Trail Runner of the year 2012 showed up, LongRun pictures showed up. LongRun walked a bunch of miles, up and down, took a mess of shots, got some that are okay.

On the way back to the finish area LongRun, that’s me, ran a little, camera held tight, forest quiet, winter cold, clouds of breath. For a few minutes I wasn’t sixty something and overweight/under-trained, sleep deprived, anxious and filled with a sense of wariness; for a moment I was present with myself, tall and straight, runnin’ easy in the winter woods, knowin’ that everything that’s now is almost yesterday. Freedom is where you find it. I want more of it. Shit, who wouldn’t!

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Tarmac Meditations #108: Feelin’ it

January 20, 2013 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

“If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can surely make something out of you (me)” ~ Muhammad Ali

Feelin’ the pain today. Yup, just plain feelin’ it.

Pulled up an old photo to describe what it feels like today…back at it though. New motivation since becoming a grandfather…

A friend says “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.” Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac).

Here is a true thing, I said. “Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.” (This from the aforementioned Kerouac) and so I must keep to rolling as Mr. Paradise suggests.

Same friend interjects. “What is the sound of one hand slapping you upside the head?” said he.

“It’s alright” said I, quoting Mr Dylan, “I’m only bleeding.”

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Tarmac Meditations #107: Getting Started

January 13, 2013 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

Started something new yesterday. I want to follow up a commission to write several articles for a running magazine that has published my photos and my writing in the past. I am honored and slightly sheepish (read nervous) that I can submit an idea without a whole lot behind it and the editor says “Fine Michael, we’re in.” In my head I hear “don’t screw it up, jackass, you know like when… and then I shut my head off and try to figure out what’s next.

The idea is contained within the Grand Slam of Ultra Running, a four event series of 100 mile races. My idea is to cover the runners in words and photos as they set out to accomplish something that has been completed 266 times since 1980. In the same time period, 3500 people have summitted Everest. This is not easy for them nor will it be easy for me.

The built in difficulty is traveling to the events that I will cover. In a word, money. So after figuring out, with the editor, that sponsorship would compromise the integrity of the pieces, I came up with idea that maybe, in an expanded version, the articles were the foundation of a book. Books need publishers, authors need publishers for their book so that the publishers can spend money on travel for said author and like that.

Hmm.

Kickstarter, is a “crowd funding” entity that provides a means by which someone can make a proposal for investment money with the ultimate goal of getting something unique put together; something that traditional lenders are not allowed to touch. The payoff? I write a book and the the investors get a signed copy and photographic images from the book. Seems dead simple, except for the fact that while I was putting it together I kept on thinking, “who in their right mind wants to pay that kind of money to read something that I write?” “Shut up” says I to me. “Just keep writing.”

In truth I am nervous about this. It means stepping out from behind the lens in a community of extra ordinary athletes and working with them without the comfort zone of anonymity that a camera presents. Am I worthy of this? Will I make a fool of myself? Again? My legitimacy rests only on my work, no longer on my running times, my workouts, my medals; my long run time over distance is more about staying present and doing my work. “What, me worry?” Yup and it is only 8:00AM.

So here it is. Time to step up. Suit up and show up. My time.

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