Tarmac Meditations

Trial Run

By Leave a Comment

I have put in numbers to see if this format will work – please be patient with me. My computer/webskills move at about the same speed as my running does in these days of pre training training.

Morning Wood

By 2 Comments

I lay back on the soiled sheets and rearranged the pillows. The pillowcases needed to be washed. The room was grey with careless use, our sweat still fresh and the sheets damp beneath me.

“Hey, man,” she said again, leaning back to stare at me with her dark brown eyes, eyes dark like her hair, wet and wild, eyes deep, masked, like the shaded trout pools on the North Bank.

“Yes,” I said into her silence, the silence of the not-still-young, a silence which ran like a river beneath the fast chat and the joke lines, the riffs of a private vernacular, a silence of frustration and anxious grief for nameless losses.

“Hey, man don’t be sad, okay? Older guys, afterwards, you know, they get down. I don’t like to see guys sad after we fuck. It makes me blue,” she said. She sounded lonesome, like November morning rain among the sycamores along the river.

Woman and Sand by Michael Lebowitz

“You don’t make me sad,” I said, not telling her that where she was is sometimes sadder than any middle age, that she made me feel old, older than the mountains, more ruined than the clear-cut sitting jagged on the sunburned slopes outside the windows; not saying that her life was full, and still in front of her, that the heartbreak and loss that was coming was like nothing she had ever seen, that her laughter and her stories of people I would never meet, never play cards with, released me from the dark tunnel of my own journey here but they also brought a boxcar of regret, a wind rent with lost voices and restless souls, all of it real for me in the hollow light of countless broken mornings.

“It’s been too nice a day to be blue,” I said.

“Great,” she said, sadly.

And if I could have done it I would have lifted her in my arms, she as light as a bundle of dried blackberries. I wanted to break the spell, to heave her into a creek somewhere, to shout and splash water happily, to find some quick irony with which to resist, to overcome.

She looked over at the clock, almost apologetically. It was almost always apologetically. When she turned back it took a second or two for her to be back in the room.

“You’re crying, you old goat,” she whispered sweetly, almost happy.

“Maybe I’m still high.”

“You’re not still high; you’re crying.”

“Maybe so, but I ain’t fuckin’ blue.”

 

 

 

Photo Credits

“Women and Sand” by Michael Lebowitz

Tarmac Meditations-My New Year’s Resolutions 2011

By 2 Comments

The ColumbiaUnder the heading of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” what are your New Year’s resolutions for 2011 for the runners in the crowd, the writers, and the peeps with dreams and schemes and other such that might bring them closer to the light in which they believe…post them in the comment section below or keep them to yourself BUT all the best of everything and may this year be a year  in which you get closer to to the light of that in which you believe for you and those you love.

Here are mine:

1. turn 65 years old

2. lose 65 lbs

3. run a 65 mile run in my 65th year

4. make a plan, follow the plan consistently, listen to the coaches

5. get to the start line of every event

6. keep a consistent journal of the journey: pretraining, training, and running.

7. write the book, take the pictures

8. Remember, everyday, to be grateful for the gift of being alive and to express it…

9. in an act of kindness for which no thank you is needed.

10. take a step, take another step, breathe, repeat.

Christmas Eve comin’ in …

By Leave a Comment

20101019.ml.jhmtR2SW001.jpg

Down the valley the mill makes monsters, rising smoke forms alliances with passing clouds. It all seems so simple really. Sky above, earth below, night time comin’ on. Put a log on the fire and hot tea in a cup. Read a good book and be 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.

Tarmac Meditations #39: A Place to Be Safe

By 13 Comments

Michael reflects on his Facebook status, special needs kids, running and resting.


September 29, 2010
Children with special needs only want what we all want: to be accepted. I have been asked to post this and leave it on my Facebook  status for at least an hour. Perhaps you who read this might do the same. It is Special Education week and this is to honor all of the children — each made in a unique way and each who learns a little differently — and, equally, their parents and teachers.

There are a couple of folks who deliver the morning paper who I often see on my run. I’m just guessing but they seem challenged, almost furtive except with each other. It’s tough to find a place for to be safe. For everyone. I run … they walk and talk and make a few bucks and contribute. I think of them from time to time when I encounter difference. It’s why I posted this on Facebook. I posted it as well because one of the toughest runners I know runs a school for children diagnosed with autism. Inspiration is where one finds it.

Little Boy Running

Don’t wanna run. Not gonna. Can’t find the right shoes (there are several wrong pairs in my closet). Back hurts. Facebook sucks. Legs sore. Need to write. “Nothing to say but it’s okay.” (John Lennon). Can’t find my lucky sox. Don’t actually have lucky sox. Whining is. Trails. Hills. Morning. Going now.

Update

Ran. Light step downhill, walking uphill. No Nano. Slower out, faster back. 4 miles. Deep fog above the valley. A soft-edged trail in the kingdom of my imagination, a misty morning mellow run. Hear the forest breathe. Listen for the fog lifting through in the trees. Remember. Dream. Let it flow. Back to coffee, a voodoo donut/cruller, a laugh and the words. No experience, no expectation.

September 30, 2010
Track workout. 35 minutes. Pretty tired. Trail run took a toll. Some days I leave my day on the run. Trying not to do this today. Thus far? Moving slowly with figuring how to work things out. A friend says, go to work, stay at work, work at work. Works for me (::ruefulgrin::).

September 31, 2010

Rested yesterday. No workout. Today? Going now, Boss, gone.


Photo Credit

“Run Logan, you’re free” Glenn~ @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.