Running for Your Life: The TOM post

I live hundreds of miles away from Canoe Lake, but I am heeding its call this month.

Canoe Lake, in Algonquin Park, marked the watery grave of one Tom Thomson (pictured on Facebook and Twitter with his painting, West Wind), an incomparable artist who came of age in my hometown of Owen Sound. He went missing on July 8, 1917, and his body – bleeding from its right ear, fishing wire coiled around an ankle – was found on July 17.

His life and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death have long been a passion of mine. I am now working on a book about TOM, all caps, as he is branded at the 50-year-old Tom Thomson Art Gallery in Owen Sound. The idea of writing a letter to my hometown hero-legend has grown, from one to another to another …

In Canada, TOM tributes are flowing, as are feature articles http://bit.ly/2tFfobc. But the mystery of his death remains. In my book, I touch on some questions that have gone unanswered, exactly one hundred years since his passing.

At times during the most intense of my writing sessions, I allow the hubris to think that the result will bring an especial quiet to Canoe Lake, allowing the spirit of an amazing artist and singular Canadian soul to finally come to rest.

Next: Running for Your Life: On Vacation

Running for Your Life: It’s Just a Muscle

Sebastian Barry, the author of my current fave novel, “Days Without End,” has this theory. When asked by an Irish friend of his (who I had the pleasure of spending some time with this past weekend, July 7-9) what was the secret of his writing success, he said, “No secret. Writing is best seen as a muscle; to get strong you have to exercise it every day.”

This makes perfect sense to me.

I ran for about 35 years with my body out of balance. Early in 2011, the breakdown happened. I injured myself, a massive hamstring tear.

I could have been excused for quitting running. In fact, one of the doctors I saw that year advised me to do just that.

Instead, I started a modest exercise program. Nightly pushups, 60 per.

I haven’t hit 365 nights per year since then, closer to an annual average of 300, I’d say. But with a stronger torso, I put less strain on my legs, my joints. I’ve run pretty much pain-free for the past two years, because I’ve exercised my chest, shoulder and arm muscles. I can take on different and more difficult tasks. It’s not so much aptitude but exercise.

Just do it, as the slogan says. Write every day. Sometimes only half an hour, sometimes four hours, sometimes an in-between length of time. But do that and you’ll get better. My guess is Barry’s theory would work for just about everything.

Next: Running for Your Life: On Vacation

Running for Your Life: Write Stuff

One may consider the above statement to be self-evident. If we don’t write stuff, how can we know where we’ve been, or more consequentially, who we are?

Alas, if anecdotal evidence from riding the NYC subway for 40-plus minutes twice a day, five days a week for the past 25 years is any indication, we, as an urban people-variant, are writing less stuff.

As I look around me during this particular Thursday (July 6), I see about thirty people in the subway car. An easy 75 percent of whom are plugged into a device. The balance are resting.

I am the only person writing stuff.

It wasn’t always this way. Back in the late 1980s, when I first came to New York, some people were writing stuff while on the way to work. Many others were reading books or newspapers: the Times, the Post, the Daily News.

Fact is, I work at a paper, the Post. Yes, I write stuff in the newsroom. Headlines, captions, copy for graphics. I think in full sentences, and write them down.

When you’ve been writing stuff your whole adult life, it comes naturally to you. A mind shaped by that experience isn't drawn to whatever is flashing on an LED screen, or doesn't suffer FOMO about the next hot thing.

The stuff that you write: ideas, feelings, what comes to mind when you simply open  the journal, remove the pen-top and begin to order your thoughts, take over. It isn’t fun, exactly, or not primarily.

It just is.

Like reading. And running. What this blog is all about. Getting to the point that you follow your passion without second-guessing. So that you increase the odds that you will coast into old age without noticing time passing by.

Next: Running for Your Life: On Vacation

Running for Your Life: Running Feet

Want to keep running into your, say, eighties? Visit your podiatrist.

That’s what I did on Canada Day … And it was time well spent.

I do go to some lengths to continue running. As in, compression socks for shin splits, patella bands for knee caps, snug-fitting $15-a-pair flexo-socks, $120 Brooks.

Still, though, I get some foot pain. So last Saturday, I went to a new foot doctor in Brooklyn.

He was, in a word, awesome. He diagnosed my pain (compensation for top-of-the-foot arthritis) that can be addressed through orthotics.

I have orthotics, I say.

Well, you may need to have them redone, the podiatrist says.

Tell you what, he continues. Come back in two weeks in your running gear, with your orthotics, and we’ll go out the park together. I’ll watch you run and then we’ll take it from there. I will be able to tell what kind of orthotics you need by watching you run.

Really? I say. You’ll do that.

Yep, he says. I don’t see this as a major problem. We get this done, and you start running in a cheaper, neutral shoe, no more than three months for the miles that you do (current average: 17-20 per week) and you can run that kind of mileage and more for the next twenty-five years.

Marathons?

Sure, why not? You want to run for your life, don’t you?

Yep. You can say that again.

Next: Running for Your Life: Write Stuff

Running for Your Life: Canada Hey Day

On Saturday, Canada Day!, M and I will be seeing the Great White North moral play: “Come From Away,” which is a seasonal sensation on Broadway. I can’t wait!

Truth is, I come from away. Canada, which in two days (July 1) will celebrate its 150^th birthday.

It is with some disbelief that I put this down. That I fondly remember the goings-on during the previous Canada milestone: our 100^th birthday. “Now We Are Twenty Million!” by Bobby Gimby … And worse, “A Place to Stand, A Place to Grow, Ontari-ari-ari-Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

Oy vey, as they say around here.

July 1, 1967, 50 years ago, and I’m eleven years old, a running and jumping and throwing maniac, blinded by the goal of somehow climbing to the gold standard in the Canadian schoolchildren fitness challenge. I miss (ironically) in only one category: long-distance running … Just two kids in my public school managed to pull off gold, and more than a handful were doing their level best to be satisfied with a silver badge, which is what I did muster.

No wars for this generation of Canadian boys and girls. Instead we had our centennial fitness badges we proudly had mom stitch on our coats and vests. Like to think I could still hold mine but it’s vanished in the cracks of time. The memory, though, will always be there.

Now We Are One Hundred and Fifty! Still a stripling in the long history of nation states. But a leader in so many ways.

Here’s to the next 150, Canada. C’mon, you’re the envy of the world. Be smug (if only for a day).

Next: Running for Your Life: Write Stuff