Where what's possible expands

Soon I'm going for a run. It is now 80 degrees and the temperature will just keep inching up until it reaches unbearable.2. This is the time of year to be indoors, to crowd into the gyms and scurry madly on a conveyer belt, literally running your ass off and going nowhere. But I'll have none of it. It's the elements for me. It's smelling breakfast cooking, laundry being done, a trillion pine needles collected on the forest floor, the sweat of that guy that just passed me like I was standing still, fresh cut grass, wind, dirt, dog shit, coffeebrewing. There is no indoor equivalent. Only those willing to suffer the elements will be rewarded with the gift of being able to discern a winter morning from a summer, spring or fall morning by simply smelling it. It's true, cold air not only feels different, it smells different. When it's really cold, it smells like the inside of a refrigerator. When it's really hot, it smells like baking pine needles and heavy cream.

Peter Pan told Wendy to "think happy thoughts and you can fly". It's sound advice that applies to more than flying. Think happy thoughts and you can run...a really long way. Think unhappy thoughts and it's much harder to do anything. Halfway through a 50 Kilometer run through Huntsville state park, I was quitting. I couldn't imagine having it in me to do another lap. One fifteen mile lap was quite enough, thank you very much. So off I waddled toward my car...crying and feeling very sorry myself. "Hey! Where ya going?" I hear a voice calling and turned around to see aslender, grey haired man waving me over to him. "I'm quitting." I admitted. I don't remember the exact words, but basically he talked me into just making it to the next aid station and if I still felt like quitting, there would be someone there to bring me back to the starting line/halfwaypoint/finish line. He was probably lying about the ride back. Lying to a runner during a grueling trail run is not only okay, it's appreciated. After all, who wants to hear: "your face is all red and yourshorts are riding up."? That wouldn't motivate anyone. "You look great, you got this thing!" Now, that's motivating...completely delusional...but we slurp up these lies along with electrolyte laden beverages, wolf down orange slices and bits of banana and then return to the wild.

Oh, the beautiful and exalted volunteer. Tired runners have spilled more Gatorade on them than a coach might expect after winning the super bowl. And still they smile, lie profusely, make sure there are no flies (currently) on what I'm shoving in my mouth. They cast their practiced eye over a runner and set about tidying them up: they tie shoes, fill bottles, and help with anything that chubby fingers that stopped working miles ago can't seem to manage. They've opened gu packages for me, put my headphones back in my ear, even dug my cell phone out of my fanny pack so that I could call my cousin and get a much needed pep talk. They require no grand gestures of appreciation. Although I'm often gushing gratitude, unintelligible over the glob of peanut butter sticking my tongue to the roof of my mouth or enhanced by bits of goldfish cracker flying out of my mouth...they probably would prefer a (mouth closed) smile and nod.

So it's a safe bet that the volunteers would have talked me to the next aid station with a lie that only someone stupid from glucose deprivation would believe: "we can't get the truck out of here right now, it would be quicker for you to just go to the next one and have the four wheeler take you in..." and so it would have gone until I reached the last aid station, perhaps suspicious that I was being manipulated but probably too dim to get it, where I would have been informed: "you can do anything for five miles". Shamed into more forward motion, I would have finished. (quite against my will) But I didn't try to quit again, I sucked it up and grinded through the last fifteen miles without crying too much and I only talked to myself (out loud) a little.

This was not a run I could call "fun", but it was a journey of self discovery. Of Expansion. We all need to walk up to that clear membrane that bounces us back to the safety of the norm and we need to push on it with all our strength until it expands and we take on new real estate within ourselves.

Good books

Judging books by their covers has been a practice of mine for at least 30 years. It is infallible. Know why? If it’s a boring book, at least it looks good on the shelf. My book shelves are a bit like a book rescue. They whisper “give me your unwanted, your cast off, your clearance rack leftovers”. I should have something to that effect embossed on the edge of the center shelf of each of my gargantuan book holders. As I glance up, I see diet books, old text books, travel books to Scotland (where I plan to go as soon as I can), craft books of all sorts and a collection of fiction so varied that I defy anyone to figure out just exactly what I like to read by merely perusing the selection. Although I suppose I have a lot of book clubby type books. Female fiction. Do you ever think they should put genetalia on books? Wouldn’t it be interesting to open a cover to ‘sex’ the book…prevent any novellas or short stories appearing unannounced on the shelves while the parent books blushed proudly. What sort of story would it be if it was the issue of Motorcycle Diaries and Pride and Prejudice? Lord of the Rings and The Devil Wears Prada? The Abs Diet and Skinny Bitch? You see…if books could procreate, we would get some really interesting reads. Probably some methodical version of this very thing is what produces a great many works of fiction. Those hermaphrodite books enjoyed by both genders. Middlesex. I’m not exactly sure that something like this doesn’t actually happen when my books are unsupervised. Indeed, there are books whose origins are quite mysterious, it is as if they just appeared one day. Hmm. That would explain such titles as Drowning Ruth and Blood Ties. Both of which I’m sure are very good…I just don’t have a clue how they came to be on my shelf.
It’s time to clean out my shelves, though. I’ve taken in too many strays. Now I must cull the herd and take the overflow to the library where they can go to [other] loving homes. Then the cycle will begin anew. I will walk into a bookstore and there will be stacks of clearance books and my fingers will reach out and graze their spines, pausing on a title of interest. I’ll look at it, read the jacket because I think I ought, then tuck it into the crook of my arm and it will come home with me. Or a friend will be ruthlessly culling their own herd and I will end up taking a few in. Most I’ll never read. That’s never been a requirement of mine when inviting a book into my home. All I really demand from a book is that they bestow a good intention of the writer. A great title, a good idea, science of any sort, cover art that makes me drool.
What is it about the written word that so captivates us? As a species, we are obsessed with writing things down and reading what others have written down. Texting has taken us by storm and I think it’s because we like to write and read much more than we like to talk and listen. There are pieces of us that gleam in the words we write, they convey who we are almost as effectively as our body language fills in what our words do not. Perhaps that’s why I prefer email to phone calls.

Legacy

I miss my mom. She would know what to say to me to make me feel better right now. She could always tell me what my dreams meant. I miss her hands. As a child I played with them quietly while she had coffee with her friends. That memory is slowly obscuring the more recent memory of how frail they were in the days before her death, the skin was transparent and rolled over the underlying tissue and veins like a piece of tissue paper would slide back and forth over a table. I sat by her bed and moved the skin back and forth, marveling at the living tissue that comprises a human body, how frail it is. The life was flowing quickly out of her and I knew it.
In the days following her death, I imagined her body, the one that had given me life, still and forever silent. A soft sound of settling, of cells deflating and organs going slack. I imagined what it would be like to fly through that intricate webbing of tissue that had walked and ran and given birth, had grown out of a single cell. And when I put my hands in the bag of ashes to touch a bone that had withstood the flames, I thought of how strange it is to have only these few pieces of the body that had been my mother. All else was gone. Her silver hair, her blue eyes, her big smile. All reduced to ashes. And when I think of her now, I hear the sound of the wind in the desert. Wind rushing through the sage brush, pushing a few tendrils of sand from one place to another; peace and silence. A silence that tells me I’m going to have to figure my dreams out on my own.
Tick tock, the clock is telling me I should get to bed. But I don’t want to. I want to sit on top of a hill and watch the moon move across the sky. Alas, there are no hills around here. Nowhere to hear the wind scream past my ears. I used to sit at the edge of cliffs and let the wind blow my cares away… or at least a little farther down the road, giving me some space to be without them. It was nice. 97 percent of NM is public lands, one can just roam freely, picnic wherever the mood strikes. I love the harshness of the high desert. Texas is 97 percent privately owned. That’s juxtaposition for you. To picnic here is to risk being shot. Unless you picnic where there are tables and paths, national parks and rest areas. No stopping where the road bends and looks inviting, hauling a food laden basket up a steep rise that affords a good view of absolute vast nothingness. Here, everything is settled and supervised and civilized. Hmmm. Maybe I should go home. Maybe my daughter needs to swing on a rope swing hung by rogue picnickers on a two hundred year old cottonwood tree whose branches span a soft sandy wash. Or snag salmon on a freezing November night, teeth chattering madly. No, her childhood is forming up exactly as it should. A child proofed childhood.