Running for Your Life: Houston, We Have a Problem

Houston, we have a problem.

America, the country from where its mission control in Houston, Texas, sent citizens to the moon and back has a problem all right.

It’s the superiority/exceptional belief that may have just come about due to the consequences of being the society that pulled off the achievements in the paragraph above.

Problem is, no matter what a particular group of Americans believes, it is, by definition, superior to what a second or a third of a fourth … group of Americans believes is exceptional.

So, yeah, Houston, New York, LA, Pittsburgh … we have a problem.

I got to thinking about this following a recent trip to my native land, Canada. I’m close to having lived longer in the USA than I have in Canada; now 31 years to 32 years. So I come to this argument with an arguably informed point of view.

As a lifelong newspaperman I pay attention to the press in both countries.

In Canada this past weekend (July 13-15), I read three papers: the Owen Sound Sun Times, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail (Toronto).

I was struck by a quality of clear-eyed curiosity and careful, thoughtful reporting, so much so that I had a devil of a time detecting an agenda.

Not superior, for sure. In fact, almost apologetic. As in, here are the facts, the objective intelligence gleaned from the questions asked about the following topics … A, B, C, D, … etc.

Ontario voters elected a populist, Trump-like premier in the past election, but the reports I read seemed respectful of the results to give the impression that those working to inform others were not adopting a superior attitude, looking to build consensus for a correct point of view.

Interesting, eh?

Next: Running for Your Life: Bay Ridge Redux

Running for Your Life: Shower Sponge

Like dreams, ideas, involuntary, inadvertent, come to you during a shower.

Trick is to remember them, and if your better angel intervenes, to write them down.

One was about being a child, discovering music.

We didn’t have much of intrinsic value in those days. But we did own a top of the line chesterfield, a Sklar, deep navy with woven flower design that simply sparkled a decade after purchase when my dad removed the cushions’ plastic coats.

And a Grundig stereo console.

They both must have set my parents back a pretty penny.

The first song I remember hearing from that stereo was “Please, release me, let me go …”

My inadvertent shower thought, 50 years on, the updated refrain would go something like this:

“Please, beneath me, let me glow … “

Feel free to fill out the rest of the stanza …

Next: Running for Your Life: Bay Ridge Redux

Running for Your Life: Treetop Tips

Wisdom is a flighty mistress.

Never appears when you think she will.

Often wisdom comes upon you at night, alone with your thoughts, and eureka, there she is.

I find treetops to be a common space for wisdom to hover.

On the mornings that I walk T, our hound dog, by myself I’ll look up at treetops and often am surprised with how calm I feel.

More so leafy trees than needle ones, although in Brooklyn’s Park Slope and Prospect Park leafy trees dominate.

There’s as much of a chance of seeing a 50-foot pin as a diehard Republican.

With all the recent talk about the suicides of celebrities Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, a suicide prevention specialist was being interviewed on CNN.

She took pains to say that the urge to kill yourself can be blunted by spending more time in nature. Simple as that.

My advice? For every minute a day you stare at your phone, gaze up into treetops for a second.

Two hours a day of phone-staring = Two minutes a day of treetop-gazing.

Sound reasonable?

Next: Running for Your Life: Bay Ridge Redux

Running for Your Life: “Inadvertent” by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Some notes from the Why I Write series, a front pocket-sized paperback  called “Inadvertent” by Karl Ove Knausgaard.

“[Writing is] to lose sight of yourself, and yet to use yourself, or that part of yourself that was beyond the control of your ego. And then to see something foreign appear on the page in front of you. Thoughts you had never (my emphasis) had before, images you had never seen. It was the form that created them.”                                                             

This insight from KOK is a reflection on how new writing sprung after his reader love of Proust, “In Search of Lost Time.”

Remembrance as recovery – How in Proust each recovered memory serves to give shape to a promise – it is not Marcel who somehow stands astride humanity like some mythical colossus, rather that by honoring the humble observations of a life electrified by sensitivities, by doubt, by a kind of hard-won knowledge that come from sincere self-nourishing introspection, Proust has given us a literature that stands the test of time, that offers lessons to the better angels in all of us.

Harder still is to find the pure joy in that gift of literature. The starting point is always the same, though. To sit down. And read.

Next: Treetop Tips

Running for Your Life: Tree-dom

So after a hiatus from this blog, I’m running at home in Prospect Park during the last lap of a heat wave.

Leaves are falling. Little ones and medium-sized. There’s a wide variety of species in Prospect Park, and I’m thinking these slender ones, prematurely yellow and brittle from the days of scorching heat and high humidity, are from a black cherry tree.

That is what I feel myself as I catch one, the first leaf of 2018, got to be the earliest I’ve ever caught a leaf on the run, thrilled to have it but alarmed that leaves are falling so early in the year. Seasons heating, if you ask me, or anyone who doesn’t have an agenda.

The run is my second since we returned from an Italian holiday. Did my darndest to keep political news at bay but upon return am struck by how the silos of political opinion have hardened.

What can we agree on? Perhaps a leaf? Which by coincidence just happened to be the first note I made in a journal that I bought for this trip.

It was twilight (June 16) and a light breeze was blowing:

“Leaves dry and brittle, some

in constant motion, and

in the foreground the tufted

swath taking whatever

force the moving air gathers,

a gentle wind to driving

rainstorm, nothing but to

do their part and defend,

protect the whole.

Damn, how humans can learn from trees.

What seems ever more true

in hot, dry climates like this

one. Nature shows us the way,

leaves as people, ants and ant

societies. When we lose sight

of the big picture, trying to

forge solutions that will, at

best as we are to manage, support

life, pride and respect for those

born in our time, then what good

are we? Can we simply carve ourselves

a sliver of space and give succor

to only our friends and loved ones?

Or dig a hole and plant a tree.

Go home and walk a dog. We are nothing

compared to that. We unenlightened

weak-willed humans, who would

not do our part in the best way

and most noble intent to husband

with the strength and power of a just society,

are not deserving of being

seen as admirable as a single leaf.”

Next: “Inadvertent” by Karl Ove Knausgaard