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.
Running for Your Life: J’ai Perdu Mon Clef!
PARIS, WEDNESDAY, OCT. 19
It’s 5:30 in the afternoon when we were shopping in the Lower Marais Farmers’ Market, and through the day, M and I have been close, taking pictures and for long hours, 11:30 a.m. jusqu’a 3:30 p.m. we’re writing, eating French onion soup, two coffees for me, Coca Light, coffee for M, bread/butter and jam, mostly working by la fenetre: two tables, four chairs. I’m on a high; M too – “Pooch” and “Centipede” – very far along in the latter. Encounter with an American woman married to a Frenchman at Café Panis, near Shakespeare & Co. (it’s still there!) along the Seine, and further south, Saint-Germain-des-Pres, where M will buy her waterproof pens, Faber Castell, although before that she will pick up a red wool hat for 10 euros, ridges and daisy decoration, and gloves too, a little Eiffel Tower for our pal at the neighborhood gym, then on to tourist row, a crepe beurre et sucre.
It’s 5:30 in the afternoon when we were shopping in the Lower Marais Farmers’ Market, and through the day, M and I have been close, taking pictures and for long hours, 11:30 a.m. jusqu’a 3:30 p.m. we’re writing, eating French onion soup, two coffees for me, Coca Light, coffee for M, bread/butter and jam, mostly working by la fenetre: two tables, four chairs. I’m on a high; M too – “Pooch” and “Centipede” – very far along in the latter. Encounter with an American woman married to a Frenchman at Café Panis, near Shakespeare & Co. (it’s still there!) along the Seine, and further south, Saint-Germain-des-Pres, where M will buy her waterproof pens, Faber Castell, although before that she will pick up a red wool hat for 10 euros, ridges and daisy decoration, and gloves too, a little Eiffel Tower for our pal at the neighborhood gym, then on to tourist row, a crepe beurre et sucre.
Running for Your Life: Training for Boston
So back at it. Blogging and marathon training. Not the New York City Marathon, which is only days away. (Don’t miss the excitement if you’re in the city. Last year I came home from an old boys’ reunion weekend to find a rockabilly street band still! playing at the ten-mile mark at Fourth Avenue and Center Slope three hours after the start for the walkers and the stragglers and the sheer gut-priders who were ambling past.) No, I’m up for Boston, my second attempt after coming up lame in 2011.
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