Well, friends and relatives, the time has come to set up a more focused blog.
For more reasons than simply trying to be a more organized writer, I’m switching over to a more running-focused blog.
Come find me and my amusing musings at www.themerryrunner.wordpress.com
On paper, I may not be an introvert, but I find it ridiculously easy to spend far too much time in my head. In fact, I would never have described myself as being “introverted,’ at least according to socially accepted standards; everything I’ve heard, read, seen or been told screams “you’re an extrovert, mofo.” But that doesn’t mean it’s possible for me to fully play that role either – just because a person is skilled at speaking to others and engaging a room doesn’t mean that a) it’s his or her preferred choice of social situation, or b) mean that said individual is not slightly terrified on the inside.
I have a secret: get people talking about something they love or themselves, and everything else flows with the minimum of effort. And when all else fails, playing into the most mundane of conversational topics works wonders.
Throughout this whole running lark, I have been in my head far more than ever. While this has afforded the opportunity to finally find some peace, it also is now a way to reduce the day’s noise to a bare minimum. Yes, that’s right folks: miss AM runner has gone PM. There’s something a little bit…deranged…about getting up to run at 6 am when the puddles are still frozen and its so cold that you can’t remember you’re physically out of bed and on the move. Does that mean I will never run in the morning as soon as November hits? Not necessarily; especially with this crazy-ass marathon coming up, I need to get the miles in somehow. It does mean, however, that I have learned to go to a good place, mentally, in the evenings right after work.
It’s wonderful to breathe in the cold air, listen to the quickened footsteps of thousands of commuters rushing, rushing home while pausing in an oasis of calm to just breathe and run. I went up the West side Wednesday; the traffic pulsed and blared, somehow lacking the acrid reek one draws into one’s lungs during the steamy summer months. Six miles flew by, a little bit dangerous, a little bit isolated and a little more peaceful than normal as most of the fair-weather runners had retreated to their treadmills and winter spin classes. I like running in the cold. Fortunately for me, the lower temperatures means more space on the paths, more room to sway about and a more unobstructed view across the water. The open park spaces are fenced off, piles of refuse and fallen trees still wait to be picked up or covered by snow; Sandy’s effects are everywhere, even right near the more ritzy Financial District.
Running after work has afforded me time to think and space to breathe which can be a blessing in New York; it hardly feels like there’s blue, full sky up there some days and others, it seems as if I rarely break above ground and rise from the subway’s depths. That hardly feels like a good balance. So these evening runs help me remember that my days are not merely concrete and metal boxes, stairs and rushing trains. And that will have to do, for now.
I have learned many things while training for now TWO marathons in New York (even though I have yet to run one…). This is my most valuable lesson so far:
You see, anyone can run over a bridge. But there is a special art to properly crossing said New York City bridges in full running regalia with a smile on one’s lips and a Serious Runner Expression across one’s face.
It helps keep the tourists out of the way, for a start.
Having lived here over a year now, I have become well-acquainted with several, runnable bridges. I offer the breakdown as follows:
The Brooklyn Bridge
Convenient to my work and definitely such stuff as tourists’ dreams are made of, the Brooklyn bridge is the prettiest of the set. At least during the day.
And…shhh…but it’s as old as shit too:
This means there are lots of tourists on it. All. The. Time. In the summer at 8 AM on a Saturday? Tourists. At 5 PM on a 90-degree Wednesday? Tourists. In the dark at around 6:15 in the winter? Tourists, tourists, tourists. It also feels horribly narrow, so between the zombie-like foreign visitors, insane bikers and kids who think it’s hilarious to slam right into you, running over this bridge is an art. One must have strength, a pissed-off look and the right speed to actually encourage people to leap away to one side. I’m still learning how to do this.
The Manhattan Bridge
Running over this bridge offers some of the most voyeristic views in the city. I may have mentioned before that I enjoy being nearly invisible as a runner in Manhattan. Here the thin curtain between the public and the private barely exists. In the same way that I don’t think my neighbors can see in my window because of the leafy tree right in front of it, people living near the Manhattan bridge deem the screaming subway and moderate traffic to act as a screen. They don’t count on pedestrians or bored runners looking into their buildings, windows and lives. I wish I had similar something more exciting to report than pigs ears drying on washing lines on Chinatown, families crowding around small tables for large meals, and Gothic wannabes posing for rooftop photoshoots in their Victorian-eqsue, painted glory. Occasionally, I get to see how “the other half” live and gaze into their well-lit, chrome and beige aparmtents that, even from such a distance, reek of privilidge and Wall Street’s heady scent. And no, that’s not just the pot fumes from the stoners perpetually at the bridge’s foot after 5 PM.
This bridge is long, creepy and makes me want to buy mace for crossings in the dark.
The Williamsburg Bridge
If the Williamsburg Bridge is the gateway to hipster heaven, then its rusted rails and impertinent graffiti are as pearly and shiny as any Biblical depiction. In reality, however, crossing this bridge is like running in a prison, or some long-forgotten railway line.
Somehow, the tourists are not deterred by fears of the seedy Lower East Side (apparently these days, its cleaned up) or the spice-crazed smells of Chinatown, and they venture out this way too. Whether its through hopes that Williamsburg’s hipster goodness will filter through and back to their hometowns, or just weird curiosity, they hang out on the bridge in matching hats (yes, really) on windy, chilly Sunday afternoons and humid Saturday mornings equally. Fortunately, this bridge has its share of scary runners in too much gear, hipster runners in old gear – and with beards – and people like myself, making it a very running-friendly bridge.
The Queensboro Bridge
For the longest time, this bridge filled me with hate. It was the scene of the crime of many of my early long runs with Jenny as we trained for the Brooklyn half marathon. There was a particularly painful 8 mile run committed over this bridge before I learned that you really, really can’t do a long run hungover (shit, I am old). There was a horrid 11-miler that was supposed to be a simple out, back and loop of the park, before we realized that coming back from Manhattan, this behemoth of a bridge is actually steeper than the initial, fresh-footed crossing from Queens. Or the hill is longer. Or it was just the end of a run; I don’t know.
It wasn’t until finishing up a 15-miler on a moderately pleasant day towards the end of marathon training number 1 that I gained an appreciation for the bridge. It had a nice slope. And really, that’s about the best thing I can say about it, as insipid as this sounds. During said run, I made it over and back with a minimal amount of pain. And, for the most part, fellow runners and bikers were both normal-looking and respectful in behavior and affect – except for the odd leering commuter on a bike, but those ruffians are just about omnipresent in Manhattan, bridges or no. I may or may not have told one to fuck off; it is not a simple task to traverse the harmless-seeming Queensboro bridge, you know.
I have yet to tackle the George Washington bridge – apparently the route up from Jersey City and over is a lot of fun – and the Triboro Bridge remains a scary, loopy mystery to me right now. So I’m sure there will be an eventual update to my bridge breakdown, and while the exact details are unknown, I have a sneaky feeling that the crossing of the two will have their own quirks and complexities.
Because, one does not simply run over NYC bridges, you see.
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
~Rainier Maria Rilke
For some odd reason, all the literature courses I took and works I studied a hell of a long time ago failed to include Rilke into their repitoire. I was fortunate enough to read Blake in the equivalent to 8th grade, and to dissect some of Shakespeare’s more obscure – and less high-school friendly – plays at about the same time. However, trying to get a bunch of 14 year-olds excited about Henry IV parts I and II is no easy task; I may or may not have skipped over significant portions of the latter, having had my fill of old, white men complaining about the state of things and occasionally providing comic relief. (Funny how this somehow ended up in “real life.” Time to pick another industry, perhaps?)
And then later, between Gatsby (again) and plenty of irritatingly dense 18th century drama (from quite a hellish professor who let me scrape by with a “B” as he thought he was doing me a favor) I still somehow missed ever reading Rilke.
Last Christmas, however, my mom threw a magnet with this quote into my stocking, it being incredibly pertinent:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
and not one of those ‘love, live, laugh’ quotable thingies. (They kind of drive me up the wall.) Because, you know, that’s not the kind of family I have, fortunately.
Finally, I got around to listening to a podcast featuring – you guessed it! – Rilke and the woman who translated a selection of his work. And, naturally, the poem I liked best is the one I stuck smack at the top of this totally rambling post, that has now taken me three days to finish. But I digress. Despite its religious undertones, the message to take away here is fantastic: let everything in. Don’t close off to one emotion because it’s frightening, nor cling to the divine because it is preferable to discomfort. In a way, the sensibility reeks of Buddhism, in that it implies one should accept everything and anything that could possibly happen. Especially this relates to emotions and experience.
The initial “letting in” part is terrifying; change is inevitable and no one wants the wonderful to end, the suffering to begin. By to close off oneself is to only life half a life or, as some may believe, barely to live at all.
There’s something wonderfully sad about this poem and by the inevitability of life’s progression. But I believe all anyone can do is simply observe, be open and learn – as much as possible while allowing the beautiful and the terrifying to happen, because each will come to an end at some point. And will begin again.
My mom said that she feels incredibly relaxed going into this Thanksgiving. Not that most years it ends up being completely crazy, but when you have a fair amount of guests attending and food/space to wrangle, things can become a little fraught.
But this year? Stress is going out of the window.
November has been a whirlwhind of a month, to the extent that my complaints earlier this year seem utterly narcissistic and base. It started with a hurricane; my family are still dealing with that destruction. It continued with an emotional blow; the cancellation of an event to which I had put into a lot of energy, effort and mental exertion.
Fortunately, other events lit up this cacophonous calendar like the last fireflies of the summer: one of my best friends got engaged to someone with whom she is utterly in tune that it makes the universe that much more harmonious, I spent some valuable time with my family, and have been grateful for continued health, well-being and the promise of what’s next. Things are exciting, but calm, wonderful but grounded.
November also marks a year in New York City. Okay, yes, fair enough, I live in Jersey City, but who’s splitting hairs?
I feel like I made my peace with the city over the past few months. Or perhaps I made peace with myself, and stopped just trying to flow with the craziness and lifestyles to which I did not want to subscribe here. Not being the kind of person who wants to conform has not changed with age, despite some of my former righteous indignation going out the window. Instead, I’m grateful for my outlook. There’s no need to complain viciously about that which cannot be changed, instead all I can do is create my own oasis of sanity and try to unite with like-minded individuals who see things from a “less-conventional” perspective. I’m grateful that I can be the kind of person to take the time to listen to someone who really needs to talk, despite it being highly likely that I will never see that person again, that I can be kind to random people on the street that display equally thoughtful feelings towards me, and that in this “new normal” that has hit the city post-Sandy, I keep it together.
And this Thanksgiving? I’m grateful for my family – all of them, even those not blood-related. I’m grateful for the way my friends have grown, have brought me back into their circle and the reunions that have taken place. I’m grateful for new friends and how they have broadened my world. And I’m grateful for the random, the unexpected and the surprisingly wonderful. I eagerly anticipate what’s coming next.
Oh, and I’m extremely grateful that this Thanksgiving, I am not suffering from the stomach virus from hell. Because being ill and debilitated for three days while empting the contents of one’s insides is not the best gift on the Welcome Wagon to the East Coast (thank you, Thanksgiving 2011.)
Here we go again…training has “officially” started. I looped my parents’ neighborhood like a woman possessed this Saturday, my feet slapping against the road to the beat of 1,001 generators keeping many of the locals in rudimentary light and heat.
Yes, Central Jersey is still, in huge spots, still without power. It is also lacking essential infrastructure (thank you, New Jersey transit) meaning that my poor dad has a two- to three-hour commute now, and had to wade through this newly-crafted circle of hell on Friday:
Hell? Or Penn Station,. You decide
This, my friends, is a lot of people. A lot of very angry, very stressed out people who surged forward so violently when the track was called that I was almost swept up in the entire mess. (I’m only 5.4″ and petite in weight.) I grabbed to my dad for dear life, and turned around and bellowed at people behind me just pushing and pushing. I mean, really. You can see I don’t weight 9,000 pounds nor am I build like a miniature wrestler. Pushing each other will only result in my injury and even longer delays, but 9,000 angry people don’t really care. Not that I blame them.
The reason for my excursion into this circle of hell was to visit my family and enjoy what was supposed to be a well-earned, post-marathon massage. I reckon that thanks to the events of last week, it was well earned for mental, if not physical reasons. And it was glorious.
And I really did feel like that.
Then, being the crazy person that I am, I decided to get in my weekly run – 12 miles – in order to feel like I could enjoy dinner (Thai) and ensuing beverages (wine) without the next-day running pressure.
Let’s just say that looping a neighborhood can be a curious thing.
I was evidently spotted by a man walking his dog and on my final lap he observed, “you’ve been out here a while.” To which I grunted and waved my then-chilly fingers.
Your mind plays tricks on you. “Is this lap one? Or two? How many miles now? Wait, head, I have to count again,” is an approximation of the conversation I had with myself.
You also think re-training for a marathon is a stupid idea. This leads to questioning why the heck you are doing this again, why you think another two 20 + mile runs is a good idea, and how you’re not going to go crazy when the temperature drops and its time to run.
I’ll admit, I nearly gave up. Very, very nearly.
Visions of palm trees couldn’t even sway my strong desire to just stop. To be “normal” and eat bad food and drink too much wine. To sleep in at the weekends and get just enough exercise. To not attend to chia seeds, vitamins, kale and almonds. To wear heels whenever and wherever. To not give a crap about that funny ache in my leg. And to relax.
After about mile eight, I remembered that I run to relax. I’m not going to set a record in Miami, nor do I expect to qualify for Boston (although that would be WAY amazing.) I run because I like to move and breathe and think and clear out the daily messes and just be with myself. The lifestyle adjustments are positive: not only do I feel and look better, but I can give back more because I am happier. There is a new “normal” and I’m wholeheartedly embracing it.
Next week, I will show those 16 miles who is boss because I can. Then I’ll have my wine.
Was it only two weeks ago that I was running in shorts? That I was enjoying the warm sun and the leaves just starting to turn? Really?
Because this is what it looked like on the early side last night:
That, my friends, is snow. White, cold, damp snow. Snow that fell from the sky just over a week after hurricane Sandy. Snow that probably really complicated the lives of a lot of people, still reeling in the wake of this mess. Snow that shouldn’t be around for at least another three weeks.
Snow that started after I decided to run a marathon in Miami.
Let’s just refresh our memories as to what that glorious place looks like:
I will be running here. YES.
Come volcanic eruption (I’d say earthquake, but that already happened), high water (wait, already happened) or…dust storm (can’t happen in New York) I will run this marathon. Seriously. It’s getting to be a little bit ridiculous now.
That being said, thanks to the snow I will be lapping my parents’ neighborhood 5 times on Saturday. But trust me, after the events last week, I am grateful that I can run and that I have the opportunity to lap any neighborhood because right now, so many people cannot run anywhere.
A pricey boat trip today – $7 – was much more enjoyable than the excursion I took back on Friday
I'm on a BOAT
Sitting in the cold in my office was not.
Whether my threats of calling the Department of Labor on our company that made everyone come in to a building sans heat and hot water (I’m convinced the company is videotaping us) or it was pure coincidence, but the temperature went up significantly after only a few miserable hours.
Over the rest of the day hung another strangeness, this time caused by the somewhat festive spirit of the election. With the events of last week, it was incredibly easy to forget about this; I’m sure the rest of the country were in a bit more of a political mindset. Personally, I felt like I solidified my political direction (not that there ever really was a question, to be honest) during the second debate.
You know, that one. With the BINDERS…FULL OF WOMEN
This fills my heart with joy
And this means, I also get to give my Political Pitch.
I can understand why someone would vote Republican for business reasons. I can see why what that part offers for financial, tax and business purposes may be more appealing to some. I can wholly respect someone who does not agree with the Democratic point of view. Whether or not I think this is right is not the issue; looking at the bare facts is a simple question of one versus the other.
However, when it comes to issues such as abortion, women’s rights and even basic perceptions of humanity, there is no way in hell you could pay me to lend my support to Romney and Ryan. As far as I am concerned, the pair are utterly out of their minds. Completely. For that pair to be elected fills me with fear and dread; it affirms that people in this country really, truly are racist, hateful and against women. No. They hate women. They see the United States not as a free country, but as a place where only if you are white and male you are permitted to succeed. And I can never, ever even begin to fathom supporting that.
Now, as for the debates. Bush? Dopey, but not bad. McCain? Smart guy, not the greatest morally, but he could have been a solid contender. Romney? During the second debate he revealed his true colors. The way he looked at Obama, the pure disrespect and snide, smarmy elitism he projected was disgusting. He couldn’t even honor the leader of our country no matter how he felt politically. He looked like evil. And the thought of that person making decisions, representing the United States in a foreign arena is so horrifying, that I will be glued to the television for the next few hours, praying that Obama does remain in the White House.
Is Obama perfect? No. Did he fulfil every promise he made? No. But he is one man and the fact that the country was in such a state at the time of the last election…I don’t think anyone, even Superman could have solved the problems.
Politics and recovery is a marathon, not a sprint (SEE I BROUGHT RUNNING INTO IT – I AM OBSESSED). It will take years. And I don’t think it’s time to give up on Obama, any more than I gave up on running after 10 miles, after 18 miles and even after the New York Marathon was cancelled.
The Sandy cleanup continues, the relief efforts are still taking place. As of Friday morning, I still thought I was running a marathon; a decision that had become increasingly hard during Thursday night and into Friday morning. Groups appeared on Facebook saying the runners were insensitive, people threatened to stage protests along the route. It was a hard decision to run, and a harder one still to feel like the hard work was all for nothing.
I finally had the chance to take the boat over to Manhattan – something I have wanted to do since I moved here. And all I could think of was “not like this”; not when people have no homes, when a supposedly joyous event was now under a huge cloud, and not when I felt guilty and generally miserable for choosing to continue to run.
Feeling somewhere between sad and lost, I went to the expo with MeriG and we were both in the, literally, same boat, emotionally and morally (Get the nautical theme? It would be amusing if not for the fact that the damn boat is going to be the bane of my existence.) We propped each other up. We looked at the pretty gear we coudn’t afford. And we grimly but happily decided that this marathon was going to be run and we would have accomplished something huge at the end.
Smiling...finally
So still, with a heavy heart, I went home and passed on the supportive feelings to a stranger, also waiting for the return boat. She was as tearful as I, until I said: “I’m going to tell you what my friend told me: we didn’t make the decision to hold the marathon. We are running it. If it’s happening no matter what, why not participate? It’s there, so we should take advantage of it.” She visibly cheered after we spoke, and I felt a little better that these really hard feelings were across the board.
And then. My bag was packed. I’d finally organized where I could stay. I was ready to go.
And then. The texts came in. Cancelled. Cancelled. Cancelled.
At this point, I wasn’t even upset that it was cancelled – okay, maybe a little bit – but the stress we’d all gone through this week into that day was just so great that…well, let’s just say two full bottles of wine were consumed.
And then…
Once I’d eaten a whole pizza Saturday and cleaned myself up, I decided several things. One, I was going to run on Sunday. And two, I was going to volunteer after my run.
Both were duly completed. The third decision? Another marathon…and so…
I AM GOING TO RUN THE MIAMI MARAHON
Training has already started again. The marathon is January 27th and my fundraising, work and spirit will go on. The best part? MeriG and some of her teammates are also running it.
Bring it on Miami. Bring it on Palm Trees.
Going to Miami...
“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Since I first saw the trailer, since I couldn’t stop reading the book, I’ve been absolutely desperate to see the film version of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. With a stunning cast and intriguing story from which to work, it was interesting to see just what the Wachowski team would create.
And what they managed to create was a concept and a massive, cinematic crossroads between several, very different stories. Certain elements connected the tales with one another; in the book, these links had a richer subtlety. Details were significant, and, naturally, rendered a little differently in narrative alone. In the film, the seemingly unconnected lives on display through these different worlds were brought together by casting the same few actors in different roles. This had the effect of almost hitting the viewer over the head with the concept of cyclical existence, parallel universes and the idea that everything is and always will be united.
Although Hugo Weaving is officially my hero; he looked amazing as a sadistic nurse. Mad props to Jim Sturgess (swoon!) too – he did a very impressive job of looking stunning no matter what makeup or character he played. Like this one:
But one overarching concept leaped out at me, and in the calm after Sandy, it seems all the more relevant and intense. People do terrible things. People do insanely horrid things over and over, throughout history. They will lean towards the terrible and treat each other in horrendous ways without a second thought. Yet on the flip side, there is love in the world. And just as much as the horrors are repeated, so is kindness and wonder and beauty.
Just like there is all this mess and sadness in New York and New Jersey, there is also joy and hope. And while I might be a pessimist at times, I really do believe that people posses the capacity for all that is glorious in the universe. It seems that this has bitten me very firmly in the rear end since I moved to New York; I’m inclined to think it’s people here. However, after seeing how some individuals have treated one another in this crisis, I instead think I’ve just had a string of bad luck. From the lady I talked to about work and continued learning, to the guy who offered me and all the others stuck in the hotel bottles of water, to the man today who presented me with a free gourmet chocolate after dinner, people have something in them that leans towards the wonderful. No matter how small the gesture.
This marathon is going to happen in two days. And I see it as us runners providing a little bit of that “wonderful” for a very large amount of that “horrible.” We are going to be the people that ran the New York marathon after Sandy. We are going to be that symbol of endurance. While many people think the marathon should just be cancelled, I think that right now the area needs that bit of hope and strength.
So, here we go. To the expo tomorrow. It just got very, very real.
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