Thanksgiving is here and gone. Is there any month that goes faster, than U.S. Thanksgiving to Christmas? Well, perhaps, not so much in my case because now the sidewalks and the intersections and the plazas in the vicinity of my near-Times Square office building are shoulder to shoulder with people, the majority of whom are out-of-towners, not in any kind of hurray to go anywhere, so each day from the first workday after Thanksgiving the odds of me getting to work precisely on time rise because now between subway exit to office desk lies a route with late-minute factor of three or four or five depending on the sedimentary – no, not sedentary, I’m thinking more like a river that fills with sediment so that it no longer flows – quality from subway to office chair. Keep pouring in the sediment and the river can slow to a stop.
Running for Your Life: Our Pack
At Milwaukee airport early on Packer GameDay, the Air Trans staff manning the gates is wearing the home green of his favorite player, No. 30, fullback John Kuhn. I’ve boneheaded my way to another travel mishap, somehow managing to mislay my driver’s license so I have no official photo ID to travel with on Sunday morning (Nov. 20), hours before Aaron Rodgers will again helm his Concussionites to victory, this time over the Tampa Bay Bucs, 35-26.
I’m here early, 6 a.m., and suspicious with not a single Pack bit of gear – not a T-shirt, or a toque, or a Cheesehead, or one of those colorful diorama pens showing a play-action pass along the line of scrimmage in shimmering liquid, say, or a tiny replica Super Bowl XLV trophy – anything to pull out and show the TSA supervisor that I’m no threat to land or liberty, but he’s so good natured on Packer GameDay, he waves me through without a second look after seeing my name on a Visa card and on an insurance coverage card that proves that at least someone in my economic unit is gainfully employed.
(Note to self: Travel by air to Milwaukee during off hours on Packer GameDay, when Rodgers is quarterbacking. There isn’t anybody who’s not going to be in a good mood.)
I’m here early, 6 a.m., and suspicious with not a single Pack bit of gear – not a T-shirt, or a toque, or a Cheesehead, or one of those colorful diorama pens showing a play-action pass along the line of scrimmage in shimmering liquid, say, or a tiny replica Super Bowl XLV trophy – anything to pull out and show the TSA supervisor that I’m no threat to land or liberty, but he’s so good natured on Packer GameDay, he waves me through without a second look after seeing my name on a Visa card and on an insurance coverage card that proves that at least someone in my economic unit is gainfully employed.
(Note to self: Travel by air to Milwaukee during off hours on Packer GameDay, when Rodgers is quarterbacking. There isn’t anybody who’s not going to be in a good mood.)
Running for Your Life: Food as Fuel
Subway Moment, midafternoon, Wed., Nov. 16:
A foxy looking twentysomething commuter pops up, exiting an arriving D Train on the D/R platform, Atlantic-Pacific station. As I leave the R Train for the D, I'm carrying my sidebag, Moleskin and pen, my black Buddy Holly’s perched on my nose in a way I’m thinking has a public intellectual panache. We pass each other to, I swear, a little electric charge, I’m thinking as I take what I’m sure was only a second before the woman’s seat, the form-fitting plastic still warm.
Next to me is a glossy magazine face down. Smiling, I turn it over. It’s AARP Magazine, with Antonio Banderas on the cover: Lead story: “New Ways to Beat Diabetes.”
*
Most of my running life I’ve been bad. Or at least inattentive. If nothing else over the past near two years since I’ve taken up the idea that I’m a marathoner, I’ve come to see that what I’d long felt was a reward for being a runner was that I didn’t have to watch what I ate. You name it: hamburgers, pizza, second helpings of birthday cake, Girl Guide (in Canada, Girl Scouts in America) cookies by the handful, trans fat-loaded potato chips, Cokes, french fries. I’m one of those runners who has trouble keeping pounds on, let alone gaining weight. So for thirty-plus years that’s what I did.
A foxy looking twentysomething commuter pops up, exiting an arriving D Train on the D/R platform, Atlantic-Pacific station. As I leave the R Train for the D, I'm carrying my sidebag, Moleskin and pen, my black Buddy Holly’s perched on my nose in a way I’m thinking has a public intellectual panache. We pass each other to, I swear, a little electric charge, I’m thinking as I take what I’m sure was only a second before the woman’s seat, the form-fitting plastic still warm.
Next to me is a glossy magazine face down. Smiling, I turn it over. It’s AARP Magazine, with Antonio Banderas on the cover: Lead story: “New Ways to Beat Diabetes.”
*
Most of my running life I’ve been bad. Or at least inattentive. If nothing else over the past near two years since I’ve taken up the idea that I’m a marathoner, I’ve come to see that what I’d long felt was a reward for being a runner was that I didn’t have to watch what I ate. You name it: hamburgers, pizza, second helpings of birthday cake, Girl Guide (in Canada, Girl Scouts in America) cookies by the handful, trans fat-loaded potato chips, Cokes, french fries. I’m one of those runners who has trouble keeping pounds on, let alone gaining weight. So for thirty-plus years that’s what I did.
Running for Your Life: Runners’ Journals
It’s too patently obvious to remark that this blog is no ordinary runners’ journal. Suffice to say it is not a place to go (although in the beginning I had a sense it might be but it has evolved in its own way, a little of this, a little of that, and all me) for info on carbo-loading and shoe choice and sock preference, and interval training and I don’t know what all.
Which is not to say that Running for Your Life isn’t a runner’s journal. Rather it is a journal of a runner who also happens to be a writer. If suddenly I were no longer running I would probalby keep up the blog because the running I’ve done in the past thirty-six years would find a way into this space. It would be hard not running. But not writing? Hardest. Because I would most certainly be dead.
Which is not to say that Running for Your Life isn’t a runner’s journal. Rather it is a journal of a runner who also happens to be a writer. If suddenly I were no longer running I would probalby keep up the blog because the running I’ve done in the past thirty-six years would find a way into this space. It would be hard not running. But not writing? Hardest. Because I would most certainly be dead.
Running for Your Life: Feeling “Occupied”
So, You Want to Live in Park Slope Dept.
Trussed up with a bungee cord around a twenty-year-old street tree in Center Slope, laser-printed loose leaf sheet in a Ziploc clear-plastic envelope with a harsh message to an offending dog walker. Attached to the bungee cord slightly above the message lettering is a thin plastic sandwich bag of what looks like the hard black day-old scat of a lapdog.
*
You can’t get into a conversation in New York City today and not talk about the occupying force downtown. The protesters in Zuccotti Park. Not a single Z word that comes close. And before early October only the folks on the local community board knew that’s what that spot of green space just east of Ground Zero is called, now home to Occupy Wall Street.
OWS is a devilish venture. Before this one, the only ventures taken up in this neighborhood were real estate and financial ones. Like the spoof written by comedian Andrew Borowitz about Lloyd Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs: “As thousands have gathered in Lower Manhattan, passionately expressing their deep discontent with the status quo, we have taken note of these protests,” wrote Blankfein, in a recent letter to investors. “And we have asked ourselves this question: ‘How can we make money off them?’ The answer is the newly launched Goldman Sachs Global Rage Fund.” This will invest in firms likely to benefit from social unrest, such as window repairers and makers of police batons. As Mr Blankfein explained: “At Goldman, we recognise that the capitalist system as we know it is circling the drain — but there’s plenty of money to be made on the way down.” As of this date (Nov. 10), the venture is 54 days old, and counting.
Trussed up with a bungee cord around a twenty-year-old street tree in Center Slope, laser-printed loose leaf sheet in a Ziploc clear-plastic envelope with a harsh message to an offending dog walker. Attached to the bungee cord slightly above the message lettering is a thin plastic sandwich bag of what looks like the hard black day-old scat of a lapdog.
*
You can’t get into a conversation in New York City today and not talk about the occupying force downtown. The protesters in Zuccotti Park. Not a single Z word that comes close. And before early October only the folks on the local community board knew that’s what that spot of green space just east of Ground Zero is called, now home to Occupy Wall Street.
OWS is a devilish venture. Before this one, the only ventures taken up in this neighborhood were real estate and financial ones. Like the spoof written by comedian Andrew Borowitz about Lloyd Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs: “As thousands have gathered in Lower Manhattan, passionately expressing their deep discontent with the status quo, we have taken note of these protests,” wrote Blankfein, in a recent letter to investors. “And we have asked ourselves this question: ‘How can we make money off them?’ The answer is the newly launched Goldman Sachs Global Rage Fund.” This will invest in firms likely to benefit from social unrest, such as window repairers and makers of police batons. As Mr Blankfein explained: “At Goldman, we recognise that the capitalist system as we know it is circling the drain — but there’s plenty of money to be made on the way down.” As of this date (Nov. 10), the venture is 54 days old, and counting.
Running for Your Life: NYC Marathon
A beautiful day (Sunday, Nov. 6). Just shorts and a top is all you need, even in the morning on the Verrazano. Hockey great Mark Messier, in the crowd, the running crowd, that is. Any bold predictions, Mark? His first marathon, just finishing it is enough (Official Time: 4:14:21). And then, maybe a word with Tortorella, the coach of the New York Rangers, the kind of shape he’s in, and the gutsy determination of him, and he’d be a better bet than say, Wolski, or yeah, Avery.
Running for Your Life: Changes
So, You Want to Live in Park Slope Dept.
A sixty-ish owner-occupier of an antique shop on Fifth Avenue pokes his head out of his front door minutes before a weekday opening. He is greeting an eager shopper. Looking at his red face, I’m thinking of the spirit of a newborn, fresh out of the womb.
*
I don’t know if I’m having a midlife crisis exactly. Novelist Douglas Coupland in his predictable “Player One” writes that once a person has reached thirty-five she’s pretty much done, as in going to have the life that’s been circumscribed over those previous three and a half decades. What’s more, he says, echoing Schopenhauer (“The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary”), what in the world were you thinking. At twenty-five, that you could be a rock star, or a power forward for the Leafs? Ha! Might as well settle in to the role of consuming our limited natural resources to negative sum game and abandon the idea that you are providing the planet any quantifiable benefits.
A sixty-ish owner-occupier of an antique shop on Fifth Avenue pokes his head out of his front door minutes before a weekday opening. He is greeting an eager shopper. Looking at his red face, I’m thinking of the spirit of a newborn, fresh out of the womb.
*
I don’t know if I’m having a midlife crisis exactly. Novelist Douglas Coupland in his predictable “Player One” writes that once a person has reached thirty-five she’s pretty much done, as in going to have the life that’s been circumscribed over those previous three and a half decades. What’s more, he says, echoing Schopenhauer (“The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary”), what in the world were you thinking. At twenty-five, that you could be a rock star, or a power forward for the Leafs? Ha! Might as well settle in to the role of consuming our limited natural resources to negative sum game and abandon the idea that you are providing the planet any quantifiable benefits.
Running for Your Life: Sleeping Is Overrated
I’ve been sleeping less. I wonder if it’s jet lag. Or stress. I had been thinking that it had to do with Thurber, our new housemate. It’ll be two months next weekend that Thurb has been with us. And I can’t help but think having a 16-month-old redbone coonhound in the house, who for the first few months as a puppy had us near-tearing our hair out, might have something to do with it. But now he’s sleeping through the night, peacefully for hours on end so there’s little merit in that explanation.
No, it could be a change of life. Earlier this month, when my brother T came to visit, he said that he gets, on average, six hours sleep a night during non-vacation time. He’s a diligent one, my younger brother, who doesn’t get up to write the great Canadian novel before work; rather he’s working out, playing squash. He plays softball in summer, ice hockey in winter. He, too, has fallen to the DVT darkside and must monitor his blood circulation so he’s gotten even a bit more serious about staying fit. Curious bloodlines, ours.
No, it could be a change of life. Earlier this month, when my brother T came to visit, he said that he gets, on average, six hours sleep a night during non-vacation time. He’s a diligent one, my younger brother, who doesn’t get up to write the great Canadian novel before work; rather he’s working out, playing squash. He plays softball in summer, ice hockey in winter. He, too, has fallen to the DVT darkside and must monitor his blood circulation so he’s gotten even a bit more serious about staying fit. Curious bloodlines, ours.
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