Do some dates bear little circles? Halos. Our actual birthdays, of course, not remembered, that is in your Birthday Suit, but who’s to say what the future holds, cosmologists today http://econ.st/e9mfDl examining data so that their profession is no longer sci-fi but real, the latest information backing arguments that the universe is forever expanding, that the Big Bang may not have been the first, and if so, then isn’t it possible that another Big Bang could occur, Creationists be damned, where’s the wonder in that?
Running for Your Life: More Pain Inc.
Enough with the public despair already. So unseemly. I haven’t bought my e-bus tickets yet, but I’m bound and determined to make it to Boston, come what may. Exactly three weeks today (March 28), I picture myself in the Boston Marathon April 18, 10:20 a.m. start, the White Wave by name, which brings to mind a line from “Ghostwritten,” the debut novel of ace novelist David Mitchell:
“Lunatics are writers whose works write them.”
“Lunatics are writers whose works write them.”
Running for Your Life: Lost Track
Injury. Sharp pain in the fat of my inner thigh. Pushing myself to where I thought I needed to be with less than a month to go until Boston, and now this. Now if Boston is going to happen, I’ll need some help.
Running for Your Life: Thurb Time
Thurber, K’s dog, is a handful, a glorious mutt that in the beginning presented as part-bloodhound, part-coonhound, part-red bone, nothing but a hounddog with a coat the color of burnt toast and a dog’s head for the Pyramids, now nine months old, the puppy is long – six feet from tip to toe, excluding tail – and not a great deal taller, think greyhound or vizsla, the mind muddies the answer to the simple question, “He’s beautiful; what is he?”
Running for Your Life: M and The Bluebird
Brooklyn Mood: Another dreary Thursday, a woman exits the subway as I’m entering, she still with the forehead-smudge of Ash Wednesday.
*
*
Running for Your Life: What’s Hidden
Today (March 8), a month and ten days until Boston. Forty days and forty nights. My friend and fellow blogger, Mike Tully, http://bit.ly/hRtDDq works with me on Sundays at the New York Post where we prepare the Monday Business section, but spiritually and otherwise, he is the philosopher/coach. Recently, he’s scored successes in speaking engagements thanks to his years of experience with young athletes and as a reporter covering sports for UPI; he turns events into stories, into lessons that through hard work and word of mouth have led to a growing following among organizations looking for a committed voice like his that can make a difference for coaches looking for that extra edge, the margin between winning and losing, yes, and not just the game but the attitude, which Coach Tully will tell you is hidden, why it’s the special talent, humility in hard work for a chance at greatness cannot come without that something extra, the X factor that coaches and philosophers and therapists call out, the killer instinct because in games as in life there are times when even the most humble among us must fight, struggle, strike, hit so that our hard work is vindicated; these are your just deserts, what you have worked for, and what will fill your life with joy.
Running for Your Life: Week Three
I haven’t read “Born to Run,” the most popular running book ever written if you can judge by best-seller numbers, two years old but still in the Top 35, but you’d have to seriously question the impact it has had because despite the outsized role running as recreation plays among the book-reading public there are only a modest number of born-to-run enthusiasts who purchase those glove-like shoes, and more incredibly, run in them, a tiny majority of true believers in the message of “Born to Run” author Christopher McDougall, an advocate of one-hundred mile races and one-hundred-twenty-mile training weeks, with nothing else below the ankle than what God provided, a glorious invention, the foot, so you would think that a running-mad place like 2011 Park Slope, Brooklyn, I would see more than the occasional finger-foot runner, and maybe now I will as I push out in the finally snow-clear roads, the most telling weeks of Boston training regimen, Week Three of Seven, because the final one before April 18 doesn’t count, it is a tapering one, but my guess is I won’t, so what conclusion can we come to, that readers are buying this book as an inspiration for young althetes, encouragement for middle-aged shirkers, or vicarious pleasure for the elderly, with perhaps a single marathon once run, or a college history of track, because it can’t be just runners who are buying; in 2009, only 467,000 runners completed a US marathon, and if Pittsburgh 2010 is any guide, just 4,058 out of 7,620, or 53 percent, finished the whole grueling route, 26.2 miles.
Running for Your Life: Cage Diem
Tessi, our bird, is named for the Swahili expression, “Belongs to all of us.” I would hazard a guess that she is twelve years old, and like the Quaker Parrots of Green-Wood Cemetery, she is likely to outlive us all. Or so any reasonable person would deduce, considering that the first decade of her/his (we’ve never had the gender determined; and given her/his one-way excretion method it isn’t discernible to the naked eye) life she hasn’t once been to the vet, why worry if his/her health is good, which it is, both physical and mental, so much so that he/she calls out “ESPO!” only when our beloved housekeeper Esperanza is at home for her weekly visit, and “Goodbye!” only when Espo, M, K, and I leave, “I love you!” and “Hello!” at surprisingly aware times, and although as yet she/he cannot talk as well as fellow African Grey Parrot, Alex, of The Economist obituary http://econ.st/fOHV4U and the final words to her minder, “You’ll be in tomorrow?”, (sure, I’m more partial to the reputed final words of Oscar Wilde, “Either this wallpaper goes, or I do”) but Tessi did – very early on – scare the living shit out of our moody and now deceased Maine Coon cat, Callie, when we allowed the cat and the bird a patch of solitude at which time Tessi bellowed in a voice I’ve not heard before or since, a manner that can only be described as that of a Great Ape in Darkest Africa.
Running for Your Life: Week Two
So you want to live in Park Slope, Exhibit C:
“Are you alive in there”
– Addressed (without reply) as neither a statement nor a question by a cyclist to the interior of the bike’s closed trailer which housed a figure or an object topped by a hockey helmet. The cyclist had moments before stopped suddenly while hell bent for leather on the straightaway before the hill-descent near The Lake in Prospect Park. Later, the cyclist and the contraption that was clearly marked BURLEY lapped me at similar light speed as I was running near the Third Street exit. I never did see what was inside.
“Are you alive in there”
– Addressed (without reply) as neither a statement nor a question by a cyclist to the interior of the bike’s closed trailer which housed a figure or an object topped by a hockey helmet. The cyclist had moments before stopped suddenly while hell bent for leather on the straightaway before the hill-descent near The Lake in Prospect Park. Later, the cyclist and the contraption that was clearly marked BURLEY lapped me at similar light speed as I was running near the Third Street exit. I never did see what was inside.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)