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

Running for Your Life: Delving Into Age of Anger

Some books fall between the cracks.

That is certainly the case with “Age of Anger” by Pankaj Mishra, which was published by FSG in February but just came to my attention in the past few weeks.

I was drawn to this title from reading Mishra’s essays and book reviews in the London Review of Books.

In short, Mishra puts into context, through political philosophy, novels and a stunning knowledge of global current events, the strange Trumpist-like goings-on from Indonesia to Indiana.  Here’s a nut graf, as they say in my business:

Rousseau had argued that human beings live neither for themselves nor for their country in a commercial society where social value is modeled on monetary value; they live for the satisfaction of their vanity, or amour proper: the desire and need to secure recognition from others, to be esteemed by them as much as one esteems oneself.

A mark of just how dense – as in so much more than the single idea that drives most current affairs nonfiction – Age of Anger is: The Bibliographic Essay spans 25 pages, with literally countless titles (say, 20 per page on average), with the final reading presented this way:

“The pope’s encyclical about climate change is arguably the most important piece of intellectual criticism in our time. See Pope Francis, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home (London, 2015).

Wow! This is one must-read book that might work best if you start from the end !

Next: Running for Your Life: Canada Hey Day 

Running for Your Life: It’s Hot, Go Slow

Climate change can be hell on running.

But this summer I’m sticking to a plan: unless it’s raining cats and dogs, I’m going to be running outside.

It’s hot out there. And it’s not even July. By the look of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on the most swelter-y days, runners  are nowhere to be seen. I imagine them, suited up in their apartments, standing in front of the A-C, looking out the window …

My advice: Get out there in your lightest weight civvies, and … GO SLOW.

Decide on your own degree of slowness. It’s 10 degrees hotter than say, 70 F, then double your degree of slowness, run 20 percent slower. It’s 20 degrees hotter, then crank down your normal running rate by 40 percent. Hotter, again. Well then walk, don’t run.

You’ll get the sweat benefits, from going slow in the heat. In fact, as a workout, a hot summer day will whip a 40-degree fall classic any day. It may not make your heart sing like a beautiful day in October, but your body will thank you.

Next: Running for Your Life: Delving Into Age of Anger 

Running for Your Life: Days Without End

Looking for some amazing beach reading?

You can’t do better than “Days Without End” by Sebastian Barry.

I’ve been a fan of Barry’s writing since an editor friend of mine shared a pre-pub version of his novel, “A Long Long Way.”

I’ve “long” been interested in writing from the accidental warrior mind – Barry does it masterfully in both these titles. But “Days Without End” is particularly radiant. Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry eat your heart out. This gay cowboy-Civil War yarn has such surprises within surprises that you’ll want to read his other work. Another favorite: “The Secret Scripture.”

Oh, and for those keeping up on such things, I’m not the only one crowing about “Days Without End.” It has garnered not one but two big literary prizes: the Costa and the Walter Scott.

Believe me, for beach reading, this just can’t miss.

Next: Running for Your Life: It’s Hot, Go Slow    

Running for Your Life: On Writing – Letters, That Is

I got this crazy idea. Writing letters to friends and family.

Consider it an Instagram reaction. See, I don’t have a smartphone (do they still call it that?), and heretofore I’ve not had an answer to those who say I’m failing to reach out, to connect with people. I mean, presumably, that’s what you do on social media, say on platforms like Instagram.

So, here’s my response. To write letters on paper, put those ideas, observations, memories into an envelope. Affix address, postage stamp and drop all in mailbox.

Wait a few weeks and a reply will come. Then, repeat.

I’ve been slow to get into the rhythm. But I’ve got the goods. I recently bought some attractive letter paper and even more important, while on a trip to Italy, came upon and purchased a pen based on an invention by Leonardo da Vinci in which the point is designed to be eternal – it resembles a pencil stroke but like ink it cannot be erased. The best part, though, is the point – unless damaged – never stops working as a writing utensil.

I don’t have paper for infinity, but a writing utensil, check. If not for eternity, I’d say for the next thirty years. Then I’ll hand down my pen to someone who wants to follow me in this practice …

Next: Running for Your Life: It’s Hot, Go Slow    

Running for Your Life: Jasmine High

Vacations have a way of setting you right. As the recent one did the past two weeks for M and me.

Below is a sample of a piece of writing done at poolside under early-evening sun amid the head-swimming smell of jasmine.

(The “jasmine bit” retops a beloved quote that I found this year that is credited to Confucius, asked how he would like to be remembered.)

“He would be so impassioned that the scent of sun-bloom jasmine would cast away his hunger for food, so joyous that he would forget to worry, and he would coast into old age without noticing time passing by.”

Next: Running for Your Life: On Writing – Letters, That Is   

Running for Your Life: Knausgaard Summer

The past five summers I’ve spent a big chunk reading “My Struggle” by Karl Ove Knausgaard.

For the uninitiated, Knausgaard’s memoir is an eight-volume literary experience that has yet to be published in its entirety in English translation. Given that my Norwegian is as proficient as my Mandarin, I consume the English versions as they come out (in the paperback variety, which has been the case the past five years). I am currently reading Volume Five.

On a recent vacation I jotted down a note describing just why I commit to this endeavor every year – Believe me, it’s worth it:

“A note here about what it is about Knausgaard that creates the fullness of a reading experience while mining memory and the most basic human emotions – fears, anxieties – conveyed in the most universal of sentiments where the Jamesian “doubt” meets the Danteian death. Even in the childhood-adolescent passages the shadow – the angel of death – never ceases to be apparent. She is in every scene (think of how the book opens with the contemplation of personal end-times). He is the Mad Hatter of our tea party. Be afraid, be very afraid but be enchanted, be swept backward, forward, through the blood and loins and tissue of what it means to be alive.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Jasmine High