Tarmac Meditations

You are here: Home / Archives for longrun

Writer, photographer, runner. I begin with what I know and imagine the rest.

Loan Me a Dime

By Leave a Comment

It began with a phone call. It usually does.

My name is Billy Prophet and these days my job is to find what’s been lost. People come to me when they tried everything else, including prayer.

I don’t do salvage work like some of my fellow sleuths say they do on account of I don’t believe in it. Once something’s been lost or broken it can’t be salvaged, not really. Hemingway once wrote that people heal stronger in the broken places. I ‘m not so sure about that. You can’t step in the same river twice or so I’ve heard. I figure the only way to find what’s been lost is to use what you know and then imagine the rest. Maybe that will allow you to start over with a clean slate. Sometimes it works for me and my clients. Sometimes not.

I should have died the way things were going. I came to that last time, on my knees, looking for  any kind of cocaine on the rancid floor of my bedroom. I remember asking a god I didn’t believe in and had been angry at for as long as I remember to please just let me go to sleep. After what seemed to me to be a long while I  asked him/her/it if it would be okay if I woke up.

The past simply stopped. What I know is that it was over. There was nothing left, nowhere to go. Death or starting over. There are still days when it is not an obvious choice.

I have tried to stop wondering how it is that I am still here. It doesn’t really matter, the why of it. I pretty much leave that to talk show hosts, Republicans, and TV evangelists. When I look back I see that I have left every place I’ve ever been with nearly everything left undone, smoke rising in the rearview mirror.  What I do know is that I have left before I have had to pay the true price of things.

I’ve lost damn near everything I’ve ever had and more to the point, pretty much everything I ever thought I was. I guess that’s why I look for lost things.

I’ve been doing it for a long time.

One of the things I learned right off is that you can lose something when it is right in front of you. I was thinking about that when the phone rang. She said her name was Linda Granger and she wanted to come see me. She had gotten my name from a friend of hers who knew me but she didn’t tell me who. I wasn’t surprised. People are embarrassed to come to me, to have other people know that they have come. In a society where ownership is status losing something or someone is a stigma, a sign of failure. I figure if you come to me you have nowhere else to go; that you think your laundry is so dirty that you just want it to go away before any more damage can be done.

I find lost things sometimes but more often than not I am simply trying to put things right, to help my clients start over. Guessing from the sound of her voice Linda Granger woke up everyday with something else that went wrong. She had nowhere else to go.

I had a bad feeling about this one.

to be continued…

Tarmac Meditations-Raining like Hell

By Leave a Comment

hard rain on the lakeRaining like hell. Had a bad night after a long and unsatisfying conversation with a friend. At a loss as how to help them or myself. Only thing that will help after the big cup of dark roast is to lace up and light out. Have to go shoot some runners later, shoot as in photograph. So now is the time. But the rain is hard and cold and I have meeting to go to, as well as words coming. On the back of my tech shirt from Run in the Country it says in big white letters “There is no such thing as bad weather, only soft people.” Bill Bowerman of Oregon Track fame said that. And he should know…he coached some of the best to their best. Oh look, the rain has slackened and I ain’t no softie(sometimes). Time to go.

Tarmac Meditations # 31: Love is Where You Find It

By 1 Comment

August 24, 2010

Ran out of excuses this morning. Ran several miles. Felt stronger in the broken places (Hemingway suggested that it might work that way). Ate some carbs and seeds. Drank tap water. Worked through an obstacle. Posting on Facebook is not writing. Exactly.

August 25, 2010

A friend at the gym said my recent Facebook posts have been “moody”. Moody Blues? I said. Noooooo… just the unhappy few weeks that have passed into memory…thankfully (even I was tired of my own creations) if you leave the door open just a little sometimes the healing begins that way. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes all it takes is the smile in the eyes of someone who cares about what you do, about how you are…

One hopeful leaf

August 26, 2010

I fished the West Coast salmon fishery when I was young. The night brought drifting boats and yellow incandescent bulbs atop the mast. The yellow light cascaded in mist, steeples in the distance..a long way from anywhere is what I thought. “Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water…” Leonard  Cohen said that this morning on my run down by the river. Churches of my own making. Refuge is where you find it.

August 27, 2010

Bed, couch, other bed, sweat, couch, bed, couch, email, sweat, couch, bed, couch email — une nuit blanc, sleepless night, lift now, run later. I figure if the high point of the day is going to be a nap then I may as well prepare for it.

Got a phone call from a friend this morning…early. Very early. She sounded sleepy. She told me that some things are not meant to be. We agreed that now that the last of the old was done we would begin. I fell back asleep — it felt like I was smiling. The wreckage of the past is quiet this morning.

August 28, 2010

No more secrets for me. No more phone calls drifting into an endless silence. No more relationships that can’t stand the light of day. No more afternoons. No more “What was I thinking?” or that other charmer “What the hell did I think was going to happen?” What’s done is done. Love and only love/can’t be denied…tonight I will sleep. Or maybe tomorrow…

August 28, 2010

Desire fights with truth like a lot…go ahead, ask anyone.

August 29, 2010

Sweet, melancholy. Sadness on a cloudy day, the end of things comes finally with love and tenderness…we may never again share the world as we have but share it we will. For the first time I get to say goodbye and fare thee well. “Love is all there is/makes the world go round.” I started on my way back to real life with her and she with me. Clean, sober, into the world at last: love is where you find it…I’m okay with that. Better than okay. Way better.

August30, 2010

It seems that the more personal storms have passed for awhile. That the dreams of the sixties about how love and peace can win out despite all the evidence to contrary seem to be true from time to time. Dylan said it. The Beatles said it. Someone else said something about the “sun gonna shine on my back door someday.” Works for me. Peace, my brothers.

August 31, 2010

I never really knew what to make of  “…she can dance a Cajun rhythm…” Saw it today in a dust swirl under the cloudless sky — dancing to a tune all our own, a moment in summer sun. I drifted off, felt the breeze freshening in the southeast, carryin’ salt water and hot days up from the Gulf, knew the wives were lookin’ south, makin’ dinner, waitin’ on the boats headin’ in; younguns gettin’ ready to roll, chopped and dropped, or two-wheel power glides, lookin’ for the mystery, the sweet/sad/ never come around again mystery blowin’ in from across the bay.


Photo Credit

“a lost heart” brilho-de-conta @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

 


Tarmac Meditations-First Step

By Leave a Comment

Nike poster...
Nike Poster 1978-80

Whenever I stop running everyday for whatever reason I find it difficult to start up again. My bent is to make it into some grand scheme in need of complex strategies and tactics. My friend Bob told me something that made sense…Get your ass out and run!  In the end, that’s the deal. Ran today for an hour. Come tomorrow I will get up and do it again( Jackson Browne reference). I have the idea to think about base building, just running, for the next two months and let my body readjust to all the surgeries, both medical and age related…meaning getting older and slower means re-adjusting what one can do and how fast one can get to a certain point. Come the new year, if the running has happened, when the running happens, I will pick an event to aim for, maybe Napa, maybe Austin maybe New Zealand, and then in celebration I will eat ice cream and put an end to the darkness and chaos in my life that ice cream’s absence brings. (paraphrasing Don Kardong)

Tarmac Meditations-On Not Running

By Leave a Comment

All these people, they are still running all except one...can you guess?
Apparently I am writing a running journal for a guy who doesn’t run; neither everyday nor do I train for races…WTH. On one side at least I write something everyday. On the other in addition to my typing skills improving, I don’t have to buy eighty dollar gloves with waffle treads and neutral posting for my fingers or faux olympic training jackets for my hands, to which my speedy fingers are attached. I type in my fingers’ aerobic zone, sometimes I do anaerobic-interval like sprints with the necessary repeats involved (correcting errors, like doing running intervals too fast, is typing’s version pulling a hammy or tweaking that achilles). Is there a point to this? Not likely…hungry, didn’t run early likely not to run later, will run tomorrow and now…lunch highlighted by  two ibuprofen, a diet pepsi and a handful of unshelled organic salted peanuts( how do you salt a peanut with the shell on and then take the shell off and still have a salty peanut to eat?)…don’t ask, don’t know.