Michael Lebowitz

Facing Up To It

August 30, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz 1 Comment

“Endurance? You’ve only got to get out there and do it. Face up to it: Man was meant to run.” –Percy Cerutty. I am swimming upstream. Come the end of Summer, cool air, touch of Fall, the beginning of the end of things in this cycle, time to take stock, stock up, buy school supplies, bring on the next chapter. With age, my age, comes nostalgia and excitement sometimes in equal doses. Once I was sailing on Lake Superior when the mast broke a long way from shore. We drifted for hours, panicked a little, got it back together, caught a break with a shift in the wind and finally got back to shore the help of neighbor who had seen us drifting away. It had been Summer, lazy, easy and sweet when we set out and Fall, chill, gray and foreboding, the few hours later when we returned to shore. Yeah, we were meant to run, we are also meant to ‘get out there and do it” by whatever means available, every single day, age and weight and troubles notwithstanding, on account of the river waits for no salmon and time waits for no man.

Waddayagonnado

August 23, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz 1 Comment

“There is nothing quite so gentle, deep, and irrational as our running—and nothing quite so savage, and so wild.” –Bernd Heinrich. It is no longer a matter of how fast or how far or how fast over how far for me. It used to be that way. It had to be that way. Now the “gentle deep and irrational” along with the “so savage and so wild” is mostly to be found in the writing, in the shooting, in getting to the high places, the hard places, the dark ledges on the trail and seeing “beyond the shadows”, in wrasslin’ to be free of yesterday and tomorrow… Hello Mr. Day, I’m comin’ for ya and I can tell you this, I need a goddam break from another day of shrug, what the hell, wadddayagonnado. You get my drift?

Hurrying Near

August 23, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz 1 Comment

Went to the track this morning. Did some quarter mile like repeat stuff. Felt old, tired, stiff, wore out and, finally, pretty good. Remembered that I was never a track star or even “real good”. I just showed up. A few weeks ago someone asked me how fast my quarters were that morning. I fudged an answer. It felt like a loaded question, full of challenge, too much like the old days of “let’s see who’s got what” bullshit. He is nearly 50 and puts in big miles and hard track workouts. I haven’t seen fifty in quite a while. And big miles/hard track workouts have become something that no longer mean what they used to mean. Simply put, time doesn’t stand still. Truth was, I hadn’t looked, I had been happy just to be there, to be able to do them at all. Me, the young fool, thought he was going to live forever, ride hard and die young. The old fool, me, knows better, is aware that “Time’s winged chariot” is “hurrying near” with each passing sunrise. I reckon a few very slow 400’s with Flash and Bigfoot and Merlin(they ran way faster) is a fine way to start the day and indeed, to keep on keepin’ on.

Good Animals

August 23, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

“There is no substitute for learning to live in our bodies. All the tests and all the machines in the world will fail if we do not first become good animals.” –George Sheehan said that. Light out, go over yonder, head down the road; I did it this morning, ran that is. A man of any gender isn’t his waistline, or his aerobic capacity but more so his dreams and his commitment to them, to his sweat and his perseverance in the real world, to his kindness and his regard for the necessity of truth and compassion and kindness when telling the truth…all this is much clearer to me in the miles, on account of ten miles is ten miles at 5 minutes per, ten minutes per 30 minutes per…you just need to get them, the miles that is, in order to have what they have to offer. The rest is just window dressing and disappears with the years.

Every Word

August 15, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz 1 Comment

“Every word was a lie” is what I wrote one day,

But then again, how would I know?

I believed every lie even when I knew it wasn’t true

because that’s what you do when she’s young and hard bodied

and your time and your dope is damn near gone.

Or at least that’s what I did.

I haven’t been to the “far back of the bar” for a very long time,

I don’t get misty eyed anymore

when I hear Johnny Hartman sing Lush Life.

The music is still sweet and sad.

Even now I want the blue smoke and murmur underneath

the worn out seduction that tonight will be different,

It was exciting wasn’t it,

even though we always knew how it would end.

Maybe she still has luminous red hair, or it could be

red streaked with grey. Maybe I’ll let go of the lies,

go outside and kick up a little dust,

dance alone under the stars of a North Texas summer night.