Running for Your Life: I Believe in “Ghosts”

Maybe there is a better post-Shakespeare interpreter of the human soul than Ibsen. The rime of the ancient northerner. But I’m at a loss to know her. Cold and wet and how can we feel God, when the spirit rises, the wicked lays bare in adultery, philandering, incest and alcohol abuse, all in stark relief against the unpromised land, ridges of fjords where the light of Paris, the lamp glow of London is but reflected in tortured memory.

So Madame Alving believes in “Ghosts,” as she says near the end of Act One: “Ghosts – Those two in the conservatory – Ghosts – They’ve come to life again!”

Madame Alving must believe in ghosts in order to follow through with what her destiny – not fate, she has taken too much of an active hand in events – is to be. (Spoiler alert: No, I won’t tell you the ending here!) In the minor art of TV, it is like Betty Francis (Draper) of “Mad Men,” whose choice in the penultimate episode also is stark but certain.

I believe in “Ghosts,” the play by Henrik Ibsen, in ways that I believe in “My Struggle” by Karl Ove Knausgaard, his fellow Norwegian. They do not spare us. By my lights, great art should not.

Next: Running for Your Life: Knausgaard, Some Notes  

Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

When it comes to writing craft, to the heart of darkness, Henrik Ibsen would find a way to connect to young and old alike, consider these "Ghosts" pearls strung in the voice of the tragic Osvald Alving:

" He called it 'Softening of the brain' or something of the sort. (With a sad smile) Charming expression! It makes one think of cherry-colored velvet curtains -- soft and delicate to stroke -- "

Next: Running for Your Life: I Believe in Ghosts!

Running for Your Life: The Next Race

It’s hard to believe that a year ago I was deep into training for the Nova Scotia Marathon.

Believe it or not, it has taken literally months for my body to feel that it can take the punishment that marathon training entails. It may sound like a cliché to say, but a good part of that process is to train the mind. That it can will your body through the paces.

Making the right race choice can help. Last year the Nova Scotia Marathon was part of a glorious road trip with my daughter K, this year it is Brooklyn. Backyard Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Marathon, which is run in November, exclusively in beautiful Prospect Park.

Why Brooklyn? Because unlike every other marathon I’ve ever run, the course will never have me more than a short stroll home in Park Slope: A stroll that is all downhill. (Thus, the Slope.)

I had in this space made noises about running in Albuquerque. But like Bugs Bunny, I made a turn at Albuquerque. Not a wrong one, though. And one day, I hope to run in the Southwest. Saving it up for another day, and giving it up to Brooklyn, where my friends and family will hopefully come out to party afterward.

Please, mark the date and come to visit the Brooklyn Marathon. Sunday morning through noon, November 15. It would be great to see you!

Next: Running for Your Life: I Believe in Ghosts!   

Running for Your Life: Is Everybody Running?

It’s a fair question. In May 2015, in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

In February, not so much.

Did I miss the memo? Perhaps, as my friend Marty Holski says, running is like skiing – or baseball, or hockey, or you name it, in terms of sports. It has a season. If Prospect Park is any guide, that season roughly corresponds with professional baseball; in a good one, you’re out there 162 times, as in the count of regular season games. That’s plenty, isn’t it? One hundred and sixty-two runs? Then it’s cold, and the runners are gone. Where, is anybody’s guess.

Now, though, everybody is running. Mothers and sons. Hipsters and creatives. Afghanistan vets and Vietnam vets. Dog owners and their dogs. They lope, they sprint, they shuffle along, alone, and in groups. You’d think every sunny Sunday in Prospect Park was a running of the New York Marathon, without the sideline crowds and festive mood. But in the park, so many faces read pain and discomfort, as if the strangers, because they are strangers to me, an all-year runner in these parts for the past twenty-three years, are here, few that show the simple pleasures of the outdoor sights, the leafing trees, the birdsong, from magpie to mockingbird to robin and redwing blackbird, and flicker, and the other day in the far, far treetops, an oriole.

I feel a stranger in the company of these runners in the park. Unless it is cold and wet, a storm coming on, that keep most of them at home, I don’t join them. Instead, I go to the gym. Run hard on the treadmill and meditate on this. Is Everybody Running? Yes. And each to his or her own beat.

Next: Running for Your Life: Next Race!

Running for Your Life: What If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

Had it not been for a highway accident 39 years ago next month (May), my great pal, Doug Marshall (known simply as Marsho), would still be giving me the gears -- and schooling me in lacrosse, which he succeeded in showing me a thing or two. To know Marsho was to know that he was a tiger at fighting against the odds to get what he wanted. His voice is one I hear often -- especially on those long runs that, even now, during my gray-hair days -- take me to the next plateau.

"The night is still young, sort of thing," he would say.

Next: Running for Your Life: Is Everybody Running?