Running for Your Life: Kind Approaches to Humanity? Really?

Notes on the road, from a diary note, June 10, 2019:

Kind approaches to humanity are not in keeping with commercial publishing.

So call it vanity publishing, the private realm.

How the “other” will never have purchase in secular life.

If I have a “calling,” it is in the spiritual realm. What I feel when running, doing tai chi, drawing, writing poetry.

To give is to give away parts of yourself on a spectrum that runs from bright visibility – think brightness on a mobile phone screen – and invisibility.

It is not lost on me that what I’ve done in my writing is to entertain the idea of honoring those who keep the faith, hold the center, be not the resume one but the order of service one, he/she whose destiny is to give until they vanish into sweetly, scented summer air.

Next: Running for Your Life: What’s Up With the Mid- to Late Sixties?

Running for Your Life: Warning Labels in Politics

We have warning labels on cigarettes, vaping gizmos, where hot coffee is served in cafés. These things will be harmful to your health.

We tell buyers of packaged goods what’s in them. Are they gluten-free? How many calories? Is that “natural” product, well, made from whole foods? Or loaded with preservatives and sugar? We care about what we consume.

I’ve encountered few arguments across the political spectrum that these kinds of regulations are unnecessary. Indeed, they’ve become “normalized,” as the kids like to say. We expect to be informed, in minute detail, about the stuff we eat and drink.

Okay, so let’s take this example and apply it to what we consume in political advertising. If we are serious about keeping our democracy healthy, as in, insuring that when a vast majority supports basic rights, like, access to reasonably priced health care, good, fully funded schools for our children, assault weapons off the streets, then we should pay to regulate political advertising, using a nonpartisan government agency that issues warning labels on political advertising.

Soon, we are going to be bombarded like never before by political advertising. Untold millions will be spent through “dark money” channels in order to attempt to shape public opinion.

And, yet, there is no way of assigning a “democracy health” grade to the message. It’s not the place here to detail how the warning classifications would work, although fact-checking of the message(s) would be involved, and similarly, a label that assigns a tag like “rhetoric” or “bombast” could be entertained. Say  a message contains 5 percent fact, 80 percent rhetoric and 15 percent bombast would be one way to go.

You get the idea. No matter what, something needs to be done. And a nonpartisan regulatory agency to try to get to the truth in political advertising would be the place to start.

Next: Running for Your Life: Kind Approaches to Humanity? Really?

Running for Your Life: Joseph Campbell in 1955 … !

Joseph Campbell offered graduating seniors at Sarah Larry College more than sixty years ago these uplifting words:

“To know that you are a sparrow and not a swan; or, on the contrary, a swan and not a sparrow...gives great security, stability and quality of harmony and peace to the psyche...”  If you are always wondering what you will become, "you will soon become so profoundly implicated in your own psychological agony that you will have little time or energy for whatever else, and certainly no sense whatsoever of the bliss and wonder of being alive."

Now those are words to live by …

Next: Running for Your Life: Warning Labels in Politics

Running for Your Life: Country Lines

The idea is to keep your eyes, your ears open … What did Henry James say? Strive to be someone upon whom nothing is lost …

“In the morning light, a caterpillar is hanging by a thread,

bobbing and squirming and zig-zagging in the summer heat.

‘now that’s core strength,’ K says, then

‘poison, don’t touch it,’

with your finger, exposed flesh.”

_______________________________________________________

“We’ve slashed, machete’d dead

limbs, rangy branches, topped by thin-point leaves,

like a desert plant, but no, this is too true north for olive trees,

And behind, the hidden figures of (his/her) place,

Mustard-yellow willow and the dead-spacey little green apple tree,

Two hummingbirds touch down, flit to orange blossoms, a gold finch, fat cardinal,

the telltale ‘cheep,’ what was covered, enmeshed, the mountain stream bank,

a wand touch upon the River Styx, where darkness, fright had spilled, before we cleared the brush

and let the light in.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Joseph Campbell in 1958 … !  

Running for Your Life: Nutrition Notes

In summer, it’s about hydration. More water than colder months, yes, but I’m a big believer in fresh fruit, especially now. Coffee and a fruit feed, then a modest morning run.

Afternoon pasta with shrimp and vegetables (is my personal favorite), more water and, yeah, fruit. I favor bowls of food, carbo-load with an eye to how often (and hard) you are running.

In the evening, a light meal: stir fry, no red meat, beer or wine.

Sugar? Am lucky that I don’t have a sweet tooth, but frankly, I think that fact has more to do with my body’s evolution, how its needs determine how much, and what, I eat, drink, and more to the point, crave.

I don’t know if this approach to nutrition and exercise has anything to do with the fact that I do not suffer from any food allergies; feel bloated and thus get a lift out of gluten-free products.

Nevertheless, this practice has served me well, and I’ve been blessed by having the means to be able to follow this diet to the best of my ability.

Next: Running for Your Life: Classic Country Lines  

Running for Your Life: The Car Show, 2019

On Saturday (Aug. 10) we went to a car show at the 31^st annual Otisville Country Fair (best line of the day: “The Petting Zoo Was a No-Show,” which spurred this mediation:

The 1963 white Impala convertible with red leather interior, chrome grille work, white walls, rear tire walls, low slung to the ground.

What was Uncle Gord and Aunt Gloria’s car. Working class, pride of ownership, the identification of personality – and automobile. When Uncle Gord is behind the wheel of his Impala (was it golden??), how sexy and in command of his life did he feel?

What do you feel when you go to a car show at a country fair in 2019?

You reach out and touch something deep inside. Which car is for you? And why?

Sadly, cars today do not seem like extensions of the self. Something is lost.

A person’s connection to their car is seen to be an aberration, a broken thing, a maladjustment.

There is no human bond to the car brad, size of the world, how not one place, one group of workers – men and women – built it, own it.

The only place I’ve seen my reflection this weekend is in the lustrous finish of the 1972 Chevy Nova, painted darkest brown with a hint of red, a promise of burgundy …

Next: Running for Your Life: Nutrition Notes

Running for Your Life: Joan Mitchell, Lady Painter

On July 12, impressions left by Joan Mitchell show, entitled, “I Carry My Landscapes Around With Me.”

What is yellow? Orange frenzy

To winter sun yellow, a child’s

Innocence, passing through to

Torment, clutter, what’s lost

There is no easy way to hold

On, but in the painting you can

Cheat. Dive in and hold.

Blue, black, violet, again

Vortex of black to a white

Center, dare to enter if you

Will. There is danger to be found

In the least unexpected places.

Drip. Drip. Drip, the four-panel

“Dark” one, mostly light blue, violet

Some dashes of the dark blue,

The Midnight Lake

The light one: Bananaman!!

Next: Running for Your Life: Nutrition Notes

Running for Your Life: Home Truths

Beyond the RED LINE of economic-racial segregation:

How the tyranny of a million YouTube videos threatens an informed democracy. Yes, the poor will get poorer, the rich richer. We are but a podcast-puddle of untutored, selfish minds.

“Total liberty for the wolves is death to the lambs.”

 – Isaiah Berlin

Next: Running for Your Life: Nutrition Notes

Running for Your Life: Routine 66

• ·        Run every other day (in all kinds of weather, with possible exceptions: electrical tempests, tornados, blizzards, hailstorms).
• ·        Do 60 REAL push-ups every night; even when you have zero energy for it.
• ·        Stretch! There is (are) at least one (OK, two) stretches that will yield the kind of outcome that will stave off injury. Do these exercises twice a day (no excuses).
• ·        Tai chi core movements: I do three sets, ten minutes per set. Set aside the time: three times a week at minimum
• ·        Meditate: Put down you g-d phone and let your body drop into full relaxation mode. Best results: When long-term memory shapes to such a degree that you actually feel that you’ve reverse-aged decades.

Next: Running for Your Life: Home Truths

Cool Underside, a poem

There is a rhythm

To my days that

Leaves room to stop

See the fat caterpillar

On the cool underside

Of the large tire rim,

The car parked on First

Street, Mary with me

And she doesn’t walk

On, rather she gathers

The caterpillar into the palm of her hand

And deposits the yellow fuzzy beauty

Into a green, leafy garden bush that is

A welcome shelter out of the harsh sun.

Next: Running for Your Life: Routine 66