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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.

A Week In a Life

August 11, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz 1 Comment

Just watched a very smart show and had the thought that my life could have been/should have been filled with that kind of intelligence and adrenaline-excitement and I got very close to regret. Then it occurred to me that I couldn’t go back and change things but I could give the work I do every day the same kind of integrity, find that feeling there. So okay then, let’s get it on.

In Boise, Idaho. Heading to Boise National Forest in a couple of hours to shoot the Wild Idaho Fifty Mile Endurance Run(WIFMER). This event was the first true ultra I shot, a year ago this weekend; a lot has happened since, damn near all of it well beyond anything I might have imagined and damn near all of it very, very, good. I will see the usual suspects, meet some new ones, sleep little, work lots and maybe get some photo images that enhance but will never replace the effort and the memory of what these folks, what ultra folks everywhere, do when they set out on the single track, light out down the road, go over yonder, all of it just because. I have been given a great gift in this, my second chance, and I intend to honor it with my presence and hard work, with a little bit of prayer and a whole mess of good luck, the forces willin’ and the crick don’t rise.

People who are my age often say “things were simpler then” and I think that it is a crock but then I heard this on the radio” Hey, bad news, be no rockin’ tonight/hey bad news be no rockin’ tonight, baby’s gone, ain’t nowhere in sight.” Okay then, simpler and when I first heard that I had no idea that rockin’ meant what rockin’ meant in the way that Rockin’ meant it, although the parents of my generation who said it was all about sex and shit, they were right about thinking it was pretty simple and outright scary. Me, I thought it sounded great and you sure could dance to it.

Gonna go to Mt Hood today to shoot a 50 mile race tomorrow. Gonna see a lot of people I know, meet some new ones. Gonna drive home late, sleep some and shoot another mountain run on Sunday morning at Hardesty; gonna see a bunch of people I know. Meet some new ones. Thursday I’m gonna go to Idaho, to the Boise National Forest and shoot a 50 miler and see a bunch of people I know, meet some new ones: all these people I know love what they do and where they do it. I sometimes think I am pretty damned lucky to be allowed to participate in my own little way. Correction: I think that every freakin’ day. Rock on, y’all, the best is yet to come.

“It’s one of those things that I just got lucky, and I didn’t screw up. It’s about being lucky and not screwing up, and trying to be ready for some moment if you happen to be the right place.” David Burnett, photographer on a famous Olympic image (Mary Decker in ’84) I ain’t him, and what I shoot isn’t Olympic in stature but it’s damned hard for the athletes and not easy on me so when it works, and it sometimes does, I think, wow, I got it, well, really, I didn’t screw it up. Nice to know I’m not alone with that.

Early Morning False Alarm

July 9, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

In the distance, while lacing up before 5:00 “Come out with your hands up, you are surrounded!” this down the street on a what was otherwise a very quiet summer morning. I remember those mornings from another time-more like the end of another long bad night. I ran by, recognized a couple of the uniforms from some local races, nodded and got my miles. It was a very hard way to live. When I looked back the lights were still flashing and several lives were heading south. After my run my neighbor asked me what all the fuss had been about; I pointed down the road and said “It took us years to learn that the “shit” could kill you, I guess it’s their turn now.” He nodded, sipped his coffee, hit his smoke and went back inside. I don’t know where he had been when I had been where those kids are now, but he had been somewhere and the memory wasn’t easy. I was glad in that moment that I didn’t have his day.

Moondance by Van Morrison had been playing on the ‘Pod while I was running. When this song/album came out I was working a cement crew in a sewer treatment plant being built in Toronto. My girlfriend and later, wife and mother to my kids, used to get up and make lunch for me. In the early summer morning we would eat breakfast, usually maple syrup bacon and eggs and toast and coffee on the french paned glassed in back porch of our beautiful, soon to be replaced by a huge apartment complex, brick house with a view of downtown. What ever could go wrong with that? It was simpler then and maybe it was easier but inevitably it changed. Now the apartments remain, the wife is ex, the children are grown and lovely…the music and the memories are still plenty good. I can almost taste that bacon and really, there is no need to explain why I was smiling when I finished my run.