Rest

A couple of days ago, I did not want to run. My mind complained about being tired while my body moved through obligatory quadriceps and hamstring stretches. My mind acquiesced to the stretches for the piriformis and other lateral hip rotators. My mind still made a case for not running this morning while I laced up my shoes. My mind reminded my fingers to tie the laces tighter than yesterday, and then it went right back to the "no run day" dialog.

It is like I went though a systems over-ride. Some unexplainable force took control, an over-ride of my mental chatter, and I went for a run. My mind wondered what happened, where did I expect to run today, not the hills, no way...too tired for the hills. My body trudged up the hill, down the next, up another hill, down a steep grade. I turned around at the bottom of the hill and started back up the steep grade down and up again.

My mind said to stay straight, but my body turned to the right and up another hill on the side road. My mind pointed left at the first cross-road, but my body kept pacing forward. My mind said to turn on the next side road, and my body kept moving ahead. Finally, my body turned for home, and my mind rejoiced. My body then turned on to another side road, it planned to go for another mile. My mind, shocked at the decision, protested. My mind gained back the controls to the body systems, turned into a cul-de-sac and pronounced that we are headed for home.

Yesterday morning, I got up early to go for a run. By the time I was out the door, the weather had turned. It poured rain, and my spirits were dampened. It was a cold rain, the type of rain that brings the cold and flu. I shivered and closed the door, my body's desire to run frozen. My mind said the word, "Rest."

My body asked, "Stretches?"

My mind answered, "Rest."

My body asked, "Can we run tonight when we get home from work?"

My mind compromised, "Yes."

As the day progressed, my body kept up the anticipation of a nice little after work run. However, by the time I drove home, my body was tired. My mind wondered if the body had just caved in or if the body had caught the mind's fatigue, like a virus or bacterial infection. My mind wondered if it could actually pass on the infliction of fatigue.

My body asked the mind if we could skip the run tonight...my body wanted to go to bed. My mind went over to the calendar where I mark run days with a green highlighter and no run days with an orange highlighter. With a tinge of sadness, I marked the nineteenth of December with an orange dash.

I set my alarm for the next morning, in order to run before work. I rose early, drank some coffee and started writing instead, this blog to be exact. At this moment, I sit hear at my desk and over my head is the sky-light looking out to the eastern sky showing gray light. My ears register drops of rain and sleet hitting the slanted roof-top window.

My body says, "It sounds cold outside. Can we run when we get home from work?"

My mind looks at the calendar and remembers that since we started running fifty-nine days ago, we have no double orange days marked on the calender. Tomorrow stands as a two month marker for this change in lifestyle I acquired.

My mind looks at the clock, and I have run out of time. I need to leave for work.

25 degrees: This Week's Running Theme

"If it were just five degrees colder!" That is what my friend Julie said to me while walking in downtown Boise. I met her in college while at Boise State University. She hailed from New Orleans and the cold weather seemed so foreign to this southern gal who had no trace of a Louisiana drawl.

Julie claimed feminism as her religion, and we together acknowledged the cardinal seasons like good aspiring pagans. We met Sunday's for breakfast. She taught me to drink French roast coffee with chicory. One morning I asked her to give me a hair cut. She had no comb or sharp scissors, but instead she used the tines of a fork and pinking shears. The zig-zag cut gave interesting texture and shape to my wavy locks, and I thought she was brilliant.

The outside temperature Julie loved the best hovered at twenty-five degrees. This last week, most every day I ran in twenty-five degree weather. Sunny, mild, cloudy, windy, dark, and at sunrise with heavy frost, my lungs breathed in cold air while I went on my daily run. Though, I did miss a day of running. It was on Tuesday when it rained about two inches. I did not feel like running in a deluge, I did not feel like running between the bands of gulf moisture, I did not feel like sopping up greasy road spray from passing cars. But, when the front passed through, twenty-five degree air, Julie's favorite temperature, found its way into my nostrils.

While running in the cold December weather, I keep thinking of Julie, my friend from twenty-five years ago. I wonder where she is, if she is still singing and playing her guitar. I wonder if she still likes the cold weather, and if she still cuts hair.

Day 45

Twenty-seven degrees outside, it is 6:30 am, and it is first light. I wrap my purple Shiva scarf around my neck twice, over that I add my snowboarder sweatshirt, and top my head with a stocking cap as I go for a run. I top the first hill, and I start laughing. I am experiencing joy. I am having a hard time believing that I am running this early in the morning and this cold in the morning, and I am feeling joyful for it. I plan on jogging the long route today. I am feeling good, not like yesterday when leg cramps cut my run to a mile instead of the longer two point five mile route. My breath is strong and my body is in a good rhythm and pace. Everything is going great! I circle around Bellevue Road at about seven tenths of a mile in to my plan, and then I had to pee. I realize my morning run would not be the two point five miles, and I would be lucky to make it home without wetting my pants. With every jarring step, I feel a splosh in my lower abdomen. I push my way back up the hill, making my steps even, concentrating on grace, not to swash my bladder too much. I thought I could go a little farther, but the urgent call of nature is too great to ignore. I sprint for home.

Domestication

People ask me, "Do you have any pets?" Often when a new guest is in my home eventually the question arises, "Where's the cat?" When I get asked the question about the cat, I ask back,"Does it smell like a cat?" People just assume I fit the stereotype. Single woman, into the healing arts, with a bookish air, earth-motherly type of woman should automatically have at least one cat on premises. Not so. Not in my house. I have allergies. Asthma to be exact. Constant breathing problems would plague me if I were to have a cat or a dog. Everyone deserves to breathe. I choose not to have fish. I do not want to clean the tanks out. I do not want a turtle. No to reptiles. No to rodents of any flavor. Basically, I do not want to clean up someone else's shit. I think about a bird, and then I look outside. Seven doves perch on the ground under my patio table and chair set. A chipmunk sits on the round of wood and cleans his face in the morning sun. A red male cardinal and his tawny mate frolic as their two beaks meet in a kiss. Mocking birds land on the umbrella as they jump to the fence and feeder. Jays circle in, and sometimes the woodpeckers poke around my back yard. I sit at my dining table and watch squirrels move in death defying contortions in order to reach the suet and meal cakes that hang in a green mesh cage. Goldfinches and purple finches flock at the feeder with their families a few hours before dusk. Innocent titmouse twins peck away at the millet looking for peanuts. Junkos, sparrows, wrens, and thrashers scratch the dirt border between the golden oregano and the muscadine vines. I buy the birdseed and keep the feeder stocked. I keep fresh water in a copper dish set on the aggregate patio. I watch the cardinals drink from it, not to mention the chipmunks, squirrels, doves and red wasps. I sweep the sidewalk clean, and I pick up the empty sunflower shells. I tend to these wild creatures. If I have neglected to supply the feeder, the birds squawk in a relentless banter. Once the feeder is full, the twitter changes. The birds song becomes a charge of revelry. One more thing about feeding the wild birds and animals...I still have to clean up the droppings.

ravens on the ground

While running outside, I like to notice the animals. One early dawn, an opossum saw me. I noticed the squint in the eyes, the holding of breath, the stance of this opossum screamed, "Don't look at me!" I scanned the trees nearby and knew the nocturnal creature was heading home for the end of his night. Today, all the ravens were on the ground. Dozens of ravens sat on the ground this afternoon while I ran my 2.5 miles. My pace slower today, it was more like a plod. The ravens watched me lumber down the road foot in front of the other. I watched the ravens waddle and strut in the grass. Block after block, foot plod after foot plod, ravens squatted in yard after yard, block after block. Sometimes, when I have enough spittle in the back of my throat, I can talk with the ravens. Today, my mouth dry, my caw did not have enough raw in it. The ravens turned their heads scoffed. Look, I am the first one to laugh at humans who attribute emotions to animals, but in this case, it is true. These ravens scoffed at me, the silly human who thinks she can talk with us. One raven, alone on a yard a block away from the first group, looked at me with narrow eyes and sullen sneer of the beak. "He is an evil one," I tell myself as I trudge by the black as soot bird. I imagined the bird cawing grouchily with his neighbors, flying into the doves on purpose, and raiding the nests of unsuspecting finches. His threatening look kept me from moving closer, and I ran instead towards the middle of the road. Watching the ravens walk around the lawns made me think of the day, oh gosh, back in 1996 or 1997 when sitting at a park in West Covina, California. I sat under a redwood tree with my boyfriend. We both felt sorry for the redwood trying to breathe in the smoggy haze. A raven walked with a halted gait in our direction and stopped right in front of us. We sat stunned as the raven looked directly at us, and then the raven grunted. Its face grimaced, as if constipated, and the raven shed one feather and waddled away. I still have the feather. Raven known as the messenger of Odin, the creator, the trickster, the originator of death, the bringer of light. Raven the wondrous, raven the rapturous, Poe did you no justice. Nevermore, nevermore.

The SAYINGS of MANDELL LOVEMAN CYPRESS “Well now let me tell you something…” “Everyone knows the right thing to do… whether or not they do it is another thing.” “The easiest money you’ll ever make is the money you don’t spend.” “You haven’t made any money until you button the button.” “In business, when you have to kiss somebody’s ass, just give it a little peck, you don’t have to hug it.” “Everybody should read The Richest Man in Babylon.” “If you don’t ask, you are lazy.” “You got to be a friend to have a friend.” “You know, I get more pleasure out of giving than I do receiving.” “We’ve had a good run.” “I love you. Thanks for coming.” These sayings were on a placard at Mandell’s funeral. He used to coach me on how to talk to people. Often, he reminded me to do one thing when in conversations with people who are boorish or selling me a line of bullshit. Mandell told me the secret to all conversations: when someone is speaking, shake your head up and down as if you are listening and just say, “Uh-Huh? Is that right?” No more needs to be said. If the person you are talking to is an idiot, let him be an idiot, you don’t have to point it out.

Thanksgiving 2009

A clear early dawn sky, the sun approaching in the southern part of the east, the day seemed as if it would be just like last year. However, by mid-morning the clouds gathered like gray chopped drop biscuits. With the incoming low pressure front, the sky turned and mimicked my emotions the day of Thanksgiving 2008, the day I fell in love, felt abandoned, and stung from a cold back-hand slap from Madame Karma. All at the same time, all at once, all converging at high noon. A year ago, I dropped off a fellow traveler at the beginning of the Natchez Trace with his bicycle and a seventy-five pound external frame backpack. Crouched over the handle bars, the pack heavy on his frame, my friend could not look back. Literally, he could not look back. He was off to pedal past his demons, face his fears of mortality, and create his own identity. An artist, life itself is his medium. My friend was off to prepare his next installation. After watching him pedal up the steep exit and disappear, I went on with my Thanksgiving Day by dining at the table of one of my spiritual advisors with multiple friends sharing stories, laughter, and our vices. A year later, I am attending Thanksgiving dinner with the same beloved friends and making the same pies with everyone's favorite crust. I just don't tell them that an egg and vinegar are the secret components. While running this afternoon, I watched the wind carry an oak leaf falling from a nearby tree. I stopped moving forward and ran in place as the leaf stalled and fell, dropped and spun. Headed for asphalt, the leaf lilted and limped as it finally changed course. I watched the leaf tumble to the side of the road. The leaf's curled points landed on the softness of grass and a lawn. I thought about how my friend on his bike landed not on the asphalt, but Austin, Texas. I wondered if he was like the leaf floating haphazard. Or, I wondered if the leaf was more like my friend, it saw a nice place to land.