Monday, June 13, 2011
DEXTER AND PORKCHOP
Appalachian Trail to Cats Rock. 6 miles/1500' of elevation gain. Another pair of shoes in the picture. Another Perfect Day:
Sunday, June 12, 2011
16,790
16,790. I've crawled on this earth for 16,790 days. 16,790 days strapped to what Kay Redfield Jamison calls "this Catherine Wheel* of a planet". Thirty two of those years were an agitated blur of unhappiness, doubt, and self destruction. They were also the years that gave me punk rock, that brought Michelle into and then out of my life, and were years that I shared the stage and studio with the 3 core members of my tribe. It's true that time burnishes the burrs and broken glass, but I keep my fractures close at hand.
I was listening to talk radio late, late one night driving back from Philadelphia and there was a discussion about what motivates people. The guest on the show talked about how people that use anger and resentment to fuel the sometimes remarkable things that they do become trapped; they become tangled in a vicious cycle of anger and accomplishment. Every attempt at greatness has to be forged by hatred until hatred is all that's left. It is, I have learned, exhausting and nearly unsustainable. For 45 of my years on this spinning stone hatred and a fear of failure have driven me, and, if I'm honest, driven me into the fucking gutter.
I don't know exactly when the switch flipped. Was it the night in Union City where I laid to rest Michelle and I? Was it some gentle foot-fall in the woods of Bennett's Pond? Was it one of those transcendent moments of volume and psychic fury that took place one night in the rehearsal room? I suppose I'll never know.
My fear has always been that without the well of misery I've always drawn from I would never write another word, never assemble another Starkweather song; that the creativity that has defined me for most of my life would abandon me. I was wrong. There is a seemingly endless well of pain to draw from and I'm finally able to draw from that source without being nearly killed by it. There always seemed to me to be something inauthentic about finding inspiration from past events, rather than being creative as I was setting myself on fire. Randall Jarrell, an American poet, understood that this was a lie. Unfortunately one day he decided he'd reached his end and stepped in front of a moving car while walking alone in the dark. This quote is from his poem 90 North:
" ...Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain."
16,790 days tethered to this stone and I've finally found some peace.
* • Catherine Wheel or breaking wheel, an instrument of torturous execution associated with Saint Catherine of Alexandria.
• Catherine Wheel (firework), a type of spinning firework.
I was listening to talk radio late, late one night driving back from Philadelphia and there was a discussion about what motivates people. The guest on the show talked about how people that use anger and resentment to fuel the sometimes remarkable things that they do become trapped; they become tangled in a vicious cycle of anger and accomplishment. Every attempt at greatness has to be forged by hatred until hatred is all that's left. It is, I have learned, exhausting and nearly unsustainable. For 45 of my years on this spinning stone hatred and a fear of failure have driven me, and, if I'm honest, driven me into the fucking gutter.
I don't know exactly when the switch flipped. Was it the night in Union City where I laid to rest Michelle and I? Was it some gentle foot-fall in the woods of Bennett's Pond? Was it one of those transcendent moments of volume and psychic fury that took place one night in the rehearsal room? I suppose I'll never know.
My fear has always been that without the well of misery I've always drawn from I would never write another word, never assemble another Starkweather song; that the creativity that has defined me for most of my life would abandon me. I was wrong. There is a seemingly endless well of pain to draw from and I'm finally able to draw from that source without being nearly killed by it. There always seemed to me to be something inauthentic about finding inspiration from past events, rather than being creative as I was setting myself on fire. Randall Jarrell, an American poet, understood that this was a lie. Unfortunately one day he decided he'd reached his end and stepped in front of a moving car while walking alone in the dark. This quote is from his poem 90 North:
" ...Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain."
16,790 days tethered to this stone and I've finally found some peace.
* • Catherine Wheel or breaking wheel, an instrument of torturous execution associated with Saint Catherine of Alexandria.
• Catherine Wheel (firework), a type of spinning firework.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
GIVE THANKS...
This isn't so much an advertisement as it is a testament to how, every once in a while, a small company, or more importantly a man running a small company, makes you have slightly more faith in the human race than if you had not met them. On the surface we're talking about running shoes; some crappy synthetics glued onto some equally crappy pieces of foam and rubber. There is nothing mystical or even particularly significant about them except for the fact that, in my case, they allow me to do something that I love, keep me within shouting distance of sanity and relative health, and keep the majority of the human race, which I have a distaste for, at a distance.
In the last year and a half Stacy at Wilderness Running Company has sent countless emails helping me to purchase anything from shoes to socks, to hydration packs; never once did he seem annoyed or make me feel like I was being a pain in the ass. I was. I've put more time and effort into buying running gear than I have buying cars or houses. He replied to no less than 4 (FOUR!) emails before I finally bought a pair of La Sportiva Crosslites and his recommendation was dead on. Four lengthy emails for a pair of shoes that didn't even cost $100! When I placed a large, ridiculously discounted order with him before Christmas, I found a free pair of Sugoi socks and gloves in the box. Fast forward to Monday... It was a shitty day. I found out that I won't be able to start school in June and may have to wait until either September or next year. Work was an absolute clusterfuck, and I was not pleasant company. So I came home from work to find the box with the shoes that Stacy had special ordered for me, ripped it open like a kid on Christmas morning, and was stunned to see a pair of used (but in great condition) La Sportiva Raptors along with my shiny new shoes. Stacy reads my blog, saw pictures of some of the trails I run on, and thought that the shoes might be just what I needed to protect my aching knees from the technical trails I run. Where the fuck are you ever going to get service like that? It turned my shitty day around.
If this all sounds like I'm gushing over Wilderness Running Company, let's be clear; I am. I don't hand out praise like cheap candy and I place great value in honesty and integrity. I've gotten nothing but that from Stacy. Who the fuck else will put up with my crazy rambling emails about stress fractures, rocks and roots, and headlamps??? No one. The crazy thing is that Stacy treats all of his customers this way. I've heard stories of people opening boxes and finding extra goodies inside and I get the feeling that he has (or should have) other customers as fanatical as myself. Now go and buy something from him. Please.
The Wilderness Running Company link is at the bottom of my blog list. Why is it at the bottom, you ask? Because I'm too stupid to figure out how to move it to the top.
IN THE RAINY SEASON:
MY NEW/USED LA SPORTIVA RAPTORS:
In the last year and a half Stacy at Wilderness Running Company has sent countless emails helping me to purchase anything from shoes to socks, to hydration packs; never once did he seem annoyed or make me feel like I was being a pain in the ass. I was. I've put more time and effort into buying running gear than I have buying cars or houses. He replied to no less than 4 (FOUR!) emails before I finally bought a pair of La Sportiva Crosslites and his recommendation was dead on. Four lengthy emails for a pair of shoes that didn't even cost $100! When I placed a large, ridiculously discounted order with him before Christmas, I found a free pair of Sugoi socks and gloves in the box. Fast forward to Monday... It was a shitty day. I found out that I won't be able to start school in June and may have to wait until either September or next year. Work was an absolute clusterfuck, and I was not pleasant company. So I came home from work to find the box with the shoes that Stacy had special ordered for me, ripped it open like a kid on Christmas morning, and was stunned to see a pair of used (but in great condition) La Sportiva Raptors along with my shiny new shoes. Stacy reads my blog, saw pictures of some of the trails I run on, and thought that the shoes might be just what I needed to protect my aching knees from the technical trails I run. Where the fuck are you ever going to get service like that? It turned my shitty day around.
If this all sounds like I'm gushing over Wilderness Running Company, let's be clear; I am. I don't hand out praise like cheap candy and I place great value in honesty and integrity. I've gotten nothing but that from Stacy. Who the fuck else will put up with my crazy rambling emails about stress fractures, rocks and roots, and headlamps??? No one. The crazy thing is that Stacy treats all of his customers this way. I've heard stories of people opening boxes and finding extra goodies inside and I get the feeling that he has (or should have) other customers as fanatical as myself. Now go and buy something from him. Please.
The Wilderness Running Company link is at the bottom of my blog list. Why is it at the bottom, you ask? Because I'm too stupid to figure out how to move it to the top.
IN THE RAINY SEASON:
MY NEW/USED LA SPORTIVA RAPTORS:
Saturday, May 21, 2011
ONE LAST TRAINING RUN BEFORE THE RAPTURE...
I guess I'd better get this post up quickly. This morning I went for my last training run before the Rapture. I've secretly been upping my miles, dialing in my nutrition, and doing CrossFit, all in anticipation of this day. Apparently at 6:00pm today I am either going to fly through the sky to heaven or suffer about 5 months of earthquakes, fires, and general lousy weather conditions before being killed. My thoughts on this are A, If I am sucked up into the air, I want to be fit and handsome when I get to heaven, or B, If I'm not one of the chosen (which, let's be honest, is a long shot anyway) I'll be able to get in some pretty gnarly and rugged trail running before I'm finally swallowed up by the heaving earth. Either scenario is fine with me. My only fear is that in hell I'll be locked in a room with the country station KIX 106 endlessly playing faux country music with nothing sharp to jam into my ear drums. Holy shit. In case it isn't clear, and how could it not be, anyone that believes the "Rapture" is happening is a fucking retard. Now I know that retard is not a nice word and every time I write it or say it I think about that, but really, if you believe that you're getting sucked up to the sky like dirt in a vacuum, then you are a fucking retard. I wish I had the time and money to drive around and interview all of the people that blew their life savings on billboards, radio, and TV ads proclaiming the end. HA. HA. HA.
Let's talk tomorrow...
Sunday, May 15, 2011
PIT BULLS AND METAL!
It seems like I should be writing, but I'm not sure about what, so I'll just let it flow. Yesterdays run was sort of a mixed bag. 55 degrees, sunny, and the morning had that nice moist earth smell. Things were going well until, that is, I was almost bitten by a big ass Pit Bull mix owned by some fucking retards that hadn't yet caught on to the concept of the leash. This was in the parking lot. Before the run. Nice. As it was snapping at me all I could think was that hitting it with a plastic Amphipod water bottle was only going to piss it off and it would be nice to have something a bit more substantial to bash its head in with. I love animals, and prefer them over humans, but if something tries to bite me I will fucking kill it. Primitive and simple. As if that wasn't enough, I spent the rest of the run listening for said retards and Cujo to go for round 2. This in turn created even more anger because I didn't have the mental toughness to hit the reset button and enjoy the beautiful morning and the fact that once again my knees felt great. Lesson learned (hopefully).
The night outshined the day...
STARKWEATHER, LONDON, 2005
The last 3 or 4 months have been a particularly creative period for the band. The way we typically work is that I put together a rough framework of a song at home, bring it down to Philly, and then it goes through the amazing process of morphing from 'my' song into a Starkweather song. Sometimes the end result is pretty close to the original vision and sometimes it becomes nearly unrecognizable. Either way it transforms from something static and lifeless to a living, breathing entity. This is something I wrote after one of those sublime moments when everything came together for us in the old factory that we used to rehears in in scenic North Philadelphia:
11/4/2007
My god, the sound of the undertow, the four of us locked together like some fucking
primordial beast, crawling the filthy floor, soaring against the pitched warnings of Icarus,
the punishment of the dissonant twist, syncopation, halted rhythm, shattering safety's ties,
North Philadelphia, filth, arson, gunshots breaking the sway of our night,our soul, our sound.
Last night was one of those nights. I brought 4 or 5 parts to the table, we turned up so loud that we shook the floor, and we lit the fucking fuse and didn't stop until the song came to life and we were spent. There are no words to describe the feeling we get when we're on. There are no words necessary; just quick glances, a nod, or a quick hand signal. Nights like this make the 365 mile weekly drives, the exhaustion, and the sometimes hostile and combative rehearsals worthwhile.
The night outshined the day...
STARKWEATHER, LONDON, 2005
The last 3 or 4 months have been a particularly creative period for the band. The way we typically work is that I put together a rough framework of a song at home, bring it down to Philly, and then it goes through the amazing process of morphing from 'my' song into a Starkweather song. Sometimes the end result is pretty close to the original vision and sometimes it becomes nearly unrecognizable. Either way it transforms from something static and lifeless to a living, breathing entity. This is something I wrote after one of those sublime moments when everything came together for us in the old factory that we used to rehears in in scenic North Philadelphia:
11/4/2007
My god, the sound of the undertow, the four of us locked together like some fucking
primordial beast, crawling the filthy floor, soaring against the pitched warnings of Icarus,
the punishment of the dissonant twist, syncopation, halted rhythm, shattering safety's ties,
North Philadelphia, filth, arson, gunshots breaking the sway of our night,our soul, our sound.
Last night was one of those nights. I brought 4 or 5 parts to the table, we turned up so loud that we shook the floor, and we lit the fucking fuse and didn't stop until the song came to life and we were spent. There are no words to describe the feeling we get when we're on. There are no words necessary; just quick glances, a nod, or a quick hand signal. Nights like this make the 365 mile weekly drives, the exhaustion, and the sometimes hostile and combative rehearsals worthwhile.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
THE MIGHTY AMEBIX
The Amebix crawled from the gutters of Bristol, UK in 1982. While many of their American counterparts (myself included) were rebelling against the comfort and privilege of middle class, the Amebix were scrounging food out of dumpsters and living in filthy squats with a handful of other bands that chose to walk the walk as well as they talked the talk. A combination of squalor, drug addiction, and sheer ferocity helped to forge a pair of albums that were seminal works in the shaping of my life as a young punk rock/hardcore kid in the 1980's, and as an undying influence on me as a musician to this day. The Amebix took the fury and chaos of punk rock and strapped it to an undercarriage of Sabbath infused heavy metal, creating one of the most unique and gifted rackets ever created in the genre. They were the first band in the genre to fuse morose sung vocals with ragged, Motorhead inspired wailing, and every note was played as if it might be their last. Their inspiration can be heard in every note of every song Starkweather has ever written. The lyrics had a literary influence that was unheard of for the time and spoke eloquently of the personal struggles of the members as well as the politics of the day (which, in hindsight, are more relevant in 2011 than they were back in 1985). From the 1987 album Monolith:
Last Will And Testament
The parchment of my flesh must break
The winter winds my soul doth take
And all beneath the heavens lies in peace
A world will form and fade away
The crystal dawn of the final day
Breaks upon the shores of death's release
Bring me my flesh and blood
On land, the sky, the sea
And light a raging fire upon the hearth
Gather round 'neath the cloak of time
And drink a toast to these
Our final days upon this earth
We made the deserts from the gardens of our youth
We spewed our blackened hearts into the sea
Through darkened skies and poisoned clouds
We blindly grope for truth
We couldn't see the forest for the trees
To my wretched son I leave this gun
To slaughter all your race
For this, the beast you have become
I have no longer taste
And daughter fair with burning hair
The swamp of life be thine
And watch as e'en the great will mate
With the lowliest of swine
To breed the sons, the greed and scum
Of this your ravaged land
All my estates, both small and great
Shall fall beneath your hand
I place very little weight on nostalgia. To me it implies that the best has past, and I'm not ready to surrender to that just yet. I despise reunion tours, retro anything, and have a near pathologic resistance to revisiting the Starkweather back catalog when we play live. Having said that, seeing the Amebix at the Trocadero in Philadelphia on January 31, 2009 was a transcendent and unforgettable moment for me. It was their first time playing the States, their first time playing together since they split up in 1987, and from the first note to the last it was a sublime experience. Not content to just run out the 'hits', raid the cash register, and fly home, they were able to channel the ferocious invincibility of the band as young men with the wisdom and sadness of adults who have lived their lives at the margins. I started going to shows in the late 1970's and began going to punk rock and hardcore shows in the early 80's. I've had the good fortune to see many of the iconic bands from that era and there are only a handful of bands that gave me the same feeling that I had that night in Philadelphia.
Here's a clip from their album Sonic Mass, due out on September 20, 2011:
Last Will And Testament
The parchment of my flesh must break
The winter winds my soul doth take
And all beneath the heavens lies in peace
A world will form and fade away
The crystal dawn of the final day
Breaks upon the shores of death's release
Bring me my flesh and blood
On land, the sky, the sea
And light a raging fire upon the hearth
Gather round 'neath the cloak of time
And drink a toast to these
Our final days upon this earth
We made the deserts from the gardens of our youth
We spewed our blackened hearts into the sea
Through darkened skies and poisoned clouds
We blindly grope for truth
We couldn't see the forest for the trees
To my wretched son I leave this gun
To slaughter all your race
For this, the beast you have become
I have no longer taste
And daughter fair with burning hair
The swamp of life be thine
And watch as e'en the great will mate
With the lowliest of swine
To breed the sons, the greed and scum
Of this your ravaged land
All my estates, both small and great
Shall fall beneath your hand
I place very little weight on nostalgia. To me it implies that the best has past, and I'm not ready to surrender to that just yet. I despise reunion tours, retro anything, and have a near pathologic resistance to revisiting the Starkweather back catalog when we play live. Having said that, seeing the Amebix at the Trocadero in Philadelphia on January 31, 2009 was a transcendent and unforgettable moment for me. It was their first time playing the States, their first time playing together since they split up in 1987, and from the first note to the last it was a sublime experience. Not content to just run out the 'hits', raid the cash register, and fly home, they were able to channel the ferocious invincibility of the band as young men with the wisdom and sadness of adults who have lived their lives at the margins. I started going to shows in the late 1970's and began going to punk rock and hardcore shows in the early 80's. I've had the good fortune to see many of the iconic bands from that era and there are only a handful of bands that gave me the same feeling that I had that night in Philadelphia.
Here's a clip from their album Sonic Mass, due out on September 20, 2011:
Sunday, May 8, 2011
GRACE IS AN UNDESERVED GIFT...
It's been a fucked up few weeks. I've added a new med that increases my focus and ability to retain information, but it makes me a bit jittery and shoots my heart rate up by 15-20 bpm. This medication has something to do with a major change in my life. I'm a Physician Assistant, graduated from a fairly prestigious PA school in NYC (who would have thought!), but have never practice as a PA. If you follow this blog at all you can probably piece together why that is so. After having graduated a decade ago I have been given the chance to return to my program and audit some of the classes that will allow me to pass my board exam. The prospect of going back to school and practice the type of medicine that I love fills me with excitement and absolute terror. Some of the fear comes rushing back. Am I smart enough? Am I good enough? Will I be able to complete this broken circle? It looks like I'm going to find out.
There are few things that I'm sure of, but one of those things is that I was put on this earth to practice emergency medicine in an "underserved" urban environment. Underserved is a polite way of saying a tough inner city neighborhood, a remote town, or American Indian reservation that has been denied the care and comfort that most of us accept as a right and not a privilege. For me that environment is Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx. I spent four months training there as a student and it is a remarkable place. Nowhere else have I seen such extremes of tragedy and hope. The gunshot wounds, stabbings, auto accidents, and overdoses seemed endless, but the satisfaction that I felt every time I walked out the door was beyond description. By being able to help a population that not many people seem to give a fuck about is a privilege and I will never be able to give back as much as I've gotten from treating those patients. The punk rock streak that is now part of my genetic makeup insists that I pay back what I have been given. I squandered the middle class lifestyle that I grew up in, ended up running myself into the gutter, and was given the chance to crawl back. It's time to repay that debt. The plan is that in about a year I will have stuffed enough knowledge into my cabeza to pass the exam and begin my mission. One definition of the word grace is that it is an undeserved gift. It is.
Now we'll go from the extremely heavy to the absolute retarded. One out of five new relationships start online. Sure they do. Match.com, eHarmony, Chemistry.com... what absolute crap. On a whim I signed up for 6 months of this ridiculousness. Having asked out almost every woman between the ages of 20 and 40 at the hospital I work at, I figured I'd better try a new approach. Considering that my after work activities involve either running in the woods alone or spending my Saturdays with the sweaty and ill mannered male members of Starkweather, I figured my only hope was to go fishing online. Apparently it is not. The way it works is that after you fill out your profile, they email you every day with some prospects that theoretically match some of your interests. You click on their profiles, look at the pictures first (no matter how shallow anyone thinks it is, EVERYONE looks at the pictures first), then, if the person isn't hideous, you read through the profile to see if she's written anything of interest. I swear to fucking christ that 9 out of 10 of these profiles mention that they like a "nice" glass of red wine (what the fuck is that?), walks on the beach at sunset, and bubble baths with candles. I am not fucking kidding. Every one of them believes that they're "laid back" (Again, what the fuck does that even mean? Does it mean that when I spend the rent money on a Bulldog puppy you won't get mad?). They're looking for a guy that's funny and can make them laugh. Ridiculous. Is there anyone that's looking for someone that's not funny and makes them cry? I can handle both the former and the latter. Now onto my part in this sociological disaster. Apparently describing oneself as a cynical and somewhat self destructive guy with a poor credit rating and a Subaru Impreza isn't the way to go. Good thing I didn't list salesman as one of my better attributes. It also doesn't help that in my pictures, most of which have been taken by me, I either look like a serial killer or like I'm dizzy and about to pass out. Impressive. So I'll stand by my claim that online dating is just a slightly cleaned up digital version of walking through the Red Light district in Amsterdam and picking out a hooker in a window. It's shallow, artificial, and somewhat soul deadening. And yes, I have walked through the Red Light district. And no, I did not bang a hooker. Nor, for the record, did I partake in any of the other activities that Amsterdam is famous for. As a side note, we are honestly the most boring band in the history of rock and roll. Guns & Roses would be ashamed.
I guess that's enough for now. I'd planned on going for another run at Bear Mountain in New York on the way home from my parents but remembered that this is the weekend of the North Face Endurance Challenge trail race. Fuckers. I wish I were running it instead of driving past it. Next year.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
"The best laid plans of mice and men..."
Let's start with the pictures since apparently they were the high point of the whole fiasco:
≈
4/30: Absolute. Fucking. Disaster. What was supposed to be a celebratory romp through the woods turned into 4 miles of running and three miles of painful hiking anger-fest. I don't know what the fuck I've done to make my left knee so mad at me, but right now it's pure hatred. It's amazing the mood swings that can take place in the span of 12 to 14 hours. I'd had a week of pain free VERY low mileage running and couldn't wait to get up this morning to spend a few hours alone in the woods. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry (John Steinbeck). Fuck yeah they do.
5/1: It really wasn't that bad. It was actually pretty dumb. I haven't run more than 5 miles in almost a month. Okay, it was really fucking stupid. I paid for the mistake on my run and continued paying right through the night. Driving back from Philly last night, 2:30 in the morning, I got stuck in a friggin' traffic jam. 3 miles, 45 minutes, stick shift, shitty knee. Oh yeah. In my world, it was a big deal, in the grand scheme of things (what the fuck does that even mean, a grand scheme of things?), it's pretty inconsequential. Here's the proof: I had a patient the other day: 84 years old, Ukranian, strong as a tank. As I was finishing up his stress test he told me that he was going to live to be 150. I laughed and asked him what made him so sure. He proceeded to tell me about how he fought in World War II, got shot and then put back together, and eventually returned to fight the Russians in Poland. He was captured one night blowing up a bridge and sentenced to death by firing squad. On the day of his execution he and 9 other POW's were lined up and all 9 were shot. When it was his time, the marksman missed and his execution was commuted to a life sentence. After 10 years and 4 months in captivity he was freed and told me that after that, there was nothing that could stop him.
I've had the privilege throughout the years to hear stories like that: a dying guy telling me that he was one of the first Americans through the gates at Dachau, a patient shot by the Germans during WW II and thrown onto a body pile that was eventually found alive by American soldiers collecting the dead, and German Jew that escaped a concentration camp by hiding in the baggage compartment of a train out of Germany.
I guess my point is that, as Evan Hone says (check his blog on my favorites list), it's just running, and really, it's kind of dumb. There's far more discomfort and pain than elation, it's incredibly selfish, it's very easy to be a dork like me and go on a 7 mile run weighed down with enough crap to go camping for a week, and it's really not that hard. Don't get me wrong, I've probably learned more about life running through the woods than nearly any other place I've ever been. It's improved my mental health greater than a whole pharmacy full of drugs, and it's a physical and mental challenge that I cherish, but in the end it is only running. How ridiculous is it that I limped through the woods throwing a temper tantrum, screaming 'FUUUUUUUUUCK!' at the top of my lungs, and feeling like a 5 year old that just had his GI Joe stolen??? It was sunny, warm, I ran into a very hot woman, and walked out of the woods under my own power. Not much to whine about. Idiot.
≈
4/30: Absolute. Fucking. Disaster. What was supposed to be a celebratory romp through the woods turned into 4 miles of running and three miles of painful hiking anger-fest. I don't know what the fuck I've done to make my left knee so mad at me, but right now it's pure hatred. It's amazing the mood swings that can take place in the span of 12 to 14 hours. I'd had a week of pain free VERY low mileage running and couldn't wait to get up this morning to spend a few hours alone in the woods. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry (John Steinbeck). Fuck yeah they do.
5/1: It really wasn't that bad. It was actually pretty dumb. I haven't run more than 5 miles in almost a month. Okay, it was really fucking stupid. I paid for the mistake on my run and continued paying right through the night. Driving back from Philly last night, 2:30 in the morning, I got stuck in a friggin' traffic jam. 3 miles, 45 minutes, stick shift, shitty knee. Oh yeah. In my world, it was a big deal, in the grand scheme of things (what the fuck does that even mean, a grand scheme of things?), it's pretty inconsequential. Here's the proof: I had a patient the other day: 84 years old, Ukranian, strong as a tank. As I was finishing up his stress test he told me that he was going to live to be 150. I laughed and asked him what made him so sure. He proceeded to tell me about how he fought in World War II, got shot and then put back together, and eventually returned to fight the Russians in Poland. He was captured one night blowing up a bridge and sentenced to death by firing squad. On the day of his execution he and 9 other POW's were lined up and all 9 were shot. When it was his time, the marksman missed and his execution was commuted to a life sentence. After 10 years and 4 months in captivity he was freed and told me that after that, there was nothing that could stop him.
I've had the privilege throughout the years to hear stories like that: a dying guy telling me that he was one of the first Americans through the gates at Dachau, a patient shot by the Germans during WW II and thrown onto a body pile that was eventually found alive by American soldiers collecting the dead, and German Jew that escaped a concentration camp by hiding in the baggage compartment of a train out of Germany.
I guess my point is that, as Evan Hone says (check his blog on my favorites list), it's just running, and really, it's kind of dumb. There's far more discomfort and pain than elation, it's incredibly selfish, it's very easy to be a dork like me and go on a 7 mile run weighed down with enough crap to go camping for a week, and it's really not that hard. Don't get me wrong, I've probably learned more about life running through the woods than nearly any other place I've ever been. It's improved my mental health greater than a whole pharmacy full of drugs, and it's a physical and mental challenge that I cherish, but in the end it is only running. How ridiculous is it that I limped through the woods throwing a temper tantrum, screaming 'FUUUUUUUUUCK!' at the top of my lungs, and feeling like a 5 year old that just had his GI Joe stolen??? It was sunny, warm, I ran into a very hot woman, and walked out of the woods under my own power. Not much to whine about. Idiot.
Friday, April 29, 2011
3650 DAYS
It will be ten years tomorrow. Three thousand six hundred and fifty days. It's an anniversary of sorts, but not an anniversary that just anyone gets to celebrate. It's about shedding skin, about disentangling from the razor wire, a profound decade long cleansing. It's about taking the rage and fluttering anxiety and converting it to meditation and motion and it is a gift.
I wish I could say that it was a distant memory, that the scars, both internal and external, have faded into the landscape, but they never will. It's better that way. Better to be reminded than to submit to the built in forgetter. For some the forgetter is survival mechanism, an adaptation that makes life bearable. For others, like me, it loads another round into the chamber and gives me free reign to repeat the same terrible mistakes in an endless loop. I try to keep my failures close and to pull them into view only when I lose my way. I have a failed marriage, a history of violence, millions of miles of poorly wired circuitry, and a fall back position that is set to self-destruct in my quiver. I try my best to use them to help rather than hinder my path. It used to be just the opposite. When the unravelling would commence I would seek out only what sped the process, and I would grind away until there was almost nothing left of me. Now I drag my scars and faulty wiring into the woods where I run to the sound of my own breath, my feet traveling above crushed leaves, stone, and standing water, and I imagine that I can hear the faint sound of tearing muscle fibers as I transform myself into a new machine.
Tomorrow morning I'll wake up shortly after sunrise and celebrate in silence by running one mile for every year since I left that life and joined this. HELL YEAH.
"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another." Anatole France
Sunday, April 24, 2011
RUNNING WITH THE BEARS
As I mentioned in the previous post, I ran one loop at Bear Creek this weekend in lovely Macungie, PA. I've said just about everything I need to say about those trails, which I love, so I'll just put up a few pics that I snapped while I was out there.
Even though my right knee has felt like crap for the last 2 or 3 weeks, I've been thinking of signing up for the North Face Endurance Challenge at Bear Mountain, NY. Probably a bad idea but when compared to other bad ideas I've followed through on, this one probably ranks in the bottom one percentile. As I was driving back from Pennsylvania to New York I got the idea that it might be nice to go for a hike at Bear Mountain to scout around and see just how gnarly the terrain was. I found a scenic overlook with some white blazes on the tress and headed out. A couple of backpackers told me that if I kept going I'd hit the Appalachian Trail. I forgot how beautiful the area is even though I grew up not even 40 minutes away. I know that the trails that they hold the race on are super tech, but the area that I ran (4 mile out and back), while it had some elevation change (in the form of awesome stone staircases) there weren't a ton of rocks and roots for me to fall over. Having seen video clips of the 2009 and 2010 races, I know that I was nowhere near the race trails. It was still an amazing detour and an area that I'll be coming back to when I'm better prepared and rested. Here are some pictures that I snapped:
Below is the elevation profile for the Bear Mountain Half:
Even though my right knee has felt like crap for the last 2 or 3 weeks, I've been thinking of signing up for the North Face Endurance Challenge at Bear Mountain, NY. Probably a bad idea but when compared to other bad ideas I've followed through on, this one probably ranks in the bottom one percentile. As I was driving back from Pennsylvania to New York I got the idea that it might be nice to go for a hike at Bear Mountain to scout around and see just how gnarly the terrain was. I found a scenic overlook with some white blazes on the tress and headed out. A couple of backpackers told me that if I kept going I'd hit the Appalachian Trail. I forgot how beautiful the area is even though I grew up not even 40 minutes away. I know that the trails that they hold the race on are super tech, but the area that I ran (4 mile out and back), while it had some elevation change (in the form of awesome stone staircases) there weren't a ton of rocks and roots for me to fall over. Having seen video clips of the 2009 and 2010 races, I know that I was nowhere near the race trails. It was still an amazing detour and an area that I'll be coming back to when I'm better prepared and rested. Here are some pictures that I snapped:
Below is the elevation profile for the Bear Mountain Half:
Saturday, April 23, 2011
BEAR CREEK 4/23/2011
I wrote this while sitting in the car getting ready to hop out of the car into the rain:
sheets of rain, butterfly stomach from a new ADD med, 20bpm headstart on heart rate. like hypomania with clarity, listening to ice t-midnight and psyching myself out of the car. rob is right. injuries attack the mind. the lingering damage to the psyche remains long after flesh and bone heal.
"these motherfuckers was ill/they didnt come to play...". (Ice-T)
I found this clip of the Bear Creek trails shot by some lunatic mountain biker. Those guys are out of their fucking minds:
sheets of rain, butterfly stomach from a new ADD med, 20bpm headstart on heart rate. like hypomania with clarity, listening to ice t-midnight and psyching myself out of the car. rob is right. injuries attack the mind. the lingering damage to the psyche remains long after flesh and bone heal.
"these motherfuckers was ill/they didnt come to play...". (Ice-T)
I found this clip of the Bear Creek trails shot by some lunatic mountain biker. Those guys are out of their fucking minds:
Bear Creek - Sep 2010 from eujinc on Vimeo.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
RANDOM CHIMNEY LOOP SHOTS
This is a tough new section of trail. It curves around the Ives Trail throughout Western CT. Each 2.25 mile loop has about 700 feet of elevation gain, which is plenty for an East Coast sissy like myself. There were some mishaps along the way involving cute girls, metal gates, and hateful left knees. Let's get to the girls/metal gate first...
Somehow I managed to not split my ridiculous head open on this:
And This:
But while crossing a little road to get to where the trail continued I got a little bit distracted by some girlie girls that had just finished running and ran into this:
A little bit closer:
And more specifically, this...
Resulting in this...
I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned in there somewhere, but for now I'm too lazy to figure out what that lesson is. On second thought, maybe it has something to do with women being poison? Not sure.
Speaking of women and poison, it's been a weird couple of days. I've been playing in the same band for 22 years. We're a bunch of musical Neanderthals that barely know the names of the strings, don't know the names of chords, and absolutely cannot read one note of fucking music. For the first decade of the band our bass player was my ex-wife. To be clear, when I mention poison alongside her name, I am the poison. We played hundreds of shows together, released two albums, and shared a nearly telepathic sense of communication, both in and out of the band. My selfishness, illness, hubris, and I did our best to destroy that perfect union, and we did. It's a long story and it is really for another time but last night Vince, our post Michelle bass player, made me a DVD that contained a bunch of shows from Philadelphia and Albany circa 1992. They were part of a big box of memories that I wanted to be rid of and he has become the gatekeeper. In these shows I was 27 and she was younger. We looked the way I'll always want to remember us; young, hostile, feral, and the four of us locked tight in the sound of our sonic hysteria (the greatest description of the band was "beautiful, repulsive, hateful, and soul wrenching"). Until a year ago it would have been far too painful to look at these memories. I still find it unsettling that I can watch myself age on Youtube and in personal show videos, that I can track the way we succumbed to the hard lives we inflicted upon ourselves, or that I inflicted upon her, if I want to be honest. But for today I sat here for a half hour or so and took in her astonishing beauty, raw talent, and savage grace. It made me smile to know that we ever were what I remembered, but it also makes me miss her terribly.
This is something I wrote for her this morning:
Murder In Technicolor 4/3/2011 Brewster, NY
We met when she was a teenager and I wasn't. She was a collection of fallen stars, here to grace the savage runoff of my life. Our union was what can never be described, the constant reminder of the frailty of our language, the failure of the connection between the most profound of moments and this empty page. The words fall away more quickly than the memories, and on the mornings when I am blessed, I can relive those early days with pinpoint accuracy. To even attempt to describe it, though, is treason; the natural curl of your hair like a nest of resting hornets, lips beyond language, the curve of your hips, and the eyes that said,'don't worry, Todd, it will be okay'.
And I can't help but think that if I were a better man, if I were even half of what you hoped I would be, we would not be sitting here or there, in our own silences, remembering the lifetimes upon lifetimes that those years gave us as gift; the stages we shared, the boardwalk we stalked in the late Fall, the nights at 13th and Spruce, that night in Rittenhouse Square, the way you held my wolves at bay for so many years. It will always be you.
Somehow I managed to not split my ridiculous head open on this:
And This:
But while crossing a little road to get to where the trail continued I got a little bit distracted by some girlie girls that had just finished running and ran into this:
A little bit closer:
And more specifically, this...
Resulting in this...
I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned in there somewhere, but for now I'm too lazy to figure out what that lesson is. On second thought, maybe it has something to do with women being poison? Not sure.
Speaking of women and poison, it's been a weird couple of days. I've been playing in the same band for 22 years. We're a bunch of musical Neanderthals that barely know the names of the strings, don't know the names of chords, and absolutely cannot read one note of fucking music. For the first decade of the band our bass player was my ex-wife. To be clear, when I mention poison alongside her name, I am the poison. We played hundreds of shows together, released two albums, and shared a nearly telepathic sense of communication, both in and out of the band. My selfishness, illness, hubris, and I did our best to destroy that perfect union, and we did. It's a long story and it is really for another time but last night Vince, our post Michelle bass player, made me a DVD that contained a bunch of shows from Philadelphia and Albany circa 1992. They were part of a big box of memories that I wanted to be rid of and he has become the gatekeeper. In these shows I was 27 and she was younger. We looked the way I'll always want to remember us; young, hostile, feral, and the four of us locked tight in the sound of our sonic hysteria (the greatest description of the band was "beautiful, repulsive, hateful, and soul wrenching"). Until a year ago it would have been far too painful to look at these memories. I still find it unsettling that I can watch myself age on Youtube and in personal show videos, that I can track the way we succumbed to the hard lives we inflicted upon ourselves, or that I inflicted upon her, if I want to be honest. But for today I sat here for a half hour or so and took in her astonishing beauty, raw talent, and savage grace. It made me smile to know that we ever were what I remembered, but it also makes me miss her terribly.
This is something I wrote for her this morning:
Murder In Technicolor 4/3/2011 Brewster, NY
We met when she was a teenager and I wasn't. She was a collection of fallen stars, here to grace the savage runoff of my life. Our union was what can never be described, the constant reminder of the frailty of our language, the failure of the connection between the most profound of moments and this empty page. The words fall away more quickly than the memories, and on the mornings when I am blessed, I can relive those early days with pinpoint accuracy. To even attempt to describe it, though, is treason; the natural curl of your hair like a nest of resting hornets, lips beyond language, the curve of your hips, and the eyes that said,'don't worry, Todd, it will be okay'.
And I can't help but think that if I were a better man, if I were even half of what you hoped I would be, we would not be sitting here or there, in our own silences, remembering the lifetimes upon lifetimes that those years gave us as gift; the stages we shared, the boardwalk we stalked in the late Fall, the nights at 13th and Spruce, that night in Rittenhouse Square, the way you held my wolves at bay for so many years. It will always be you.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
CLUSTERFUCK
I've been writing bits and pieces for this site for a few months now but have been too apathetic to cut/paste/publish. So what we have here is a clusterfuck of partially formed thoughts, rants, and reflections. Good luck trying to find the common thread:
This site should be more than a training log. Honestly, the training isn't even training anymore. There are no races, no goals, no set mileage. I've been running half as far as I've wanted to, and then turning around and running back. Simple. There are technical things that have changed. I got orthotics and am running pain free. For now. Other than that there really isn't much to write about from a running perspective other than to say that it's much more enjoyable than it has been in a while. Having said that, this site should incorporate ALL of my lives. I'm well aware that I have less than a handful of readers and am basically writing to myself (which is apparently my favorite topic) but fuck it, who cares. I write, I play music, I work in the medical field, and I've stuck my retarded head into the even more retarded world of online dating (more on that later). After being inspired by a few blogs that I follow ( DIRTSURFING: http://dirtsurfinagain.blogspot.com/ , EVAN HONE: http://evanak-onemoremile.blogspot.com/ ) I've decided that I can do better job than I've done in the past. I wish to christ I knew how to make one of those hotlink things rather than having you cut and paste the link to those two great sites, I really do.
This winter was difficult. Outside matched in and what that meant is that for two months I shut down. It snowed and I retreated from things that I cared greatly for. I became sick and didn't have the desire or will to fight it, so I laid in bed for over a month. This is nothing new, but it is new to my world since I've started running through the woods. I knew it would end but I didn't know how long I would be held under. That's a huge change from the past, where I was never sure if the feeling of going under would have an end.
So... I'm a writer. Not of the often smart ass and sarcastic shit I write here but something that I hope is of substance. My book of prose, entitled "Pulling Scars From The Night Time Sky" ends where it began, on a park bench in Weehawken, New Jersey, overlooking the Hudson River; looking out upon the Manhattan skyline, which author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. once referred to as Skyscraper National Park. I started writing it in early 2000 and wrote the last page on December 1, 2010. It is the story of, in the simplest terms, a broken boy and his journey through mental illness, homelessness, and abject failure; the loss of anything and everything that ever mattered to him, and the attempt to put those shattered pieces back together again. It stands at over 400 pages and will probably never be published. It does not matter. What matters is that the boy that started writing the book at the onset of the new millennium lived long enough to write that final entry. There was very little likelihood that that would happen.
I suppose there should be stories on this blog. Stories of insane nights and equally as insane actions with hopelessly insane friends. There are none. I spend my non work hours alone. Alone. I split from work, lace up, and head into the woods to my temple. Alone. I rarely see anyone back there and when I do, a nod or a quick hello speaks volumes. We understand implicitly. I live in a pretty small town and work for a pretty large hospital. Unlike the welcomed anonymity of Manhattan, I tend to run into my patients up here far more often than I'd like. It's nothing personal, it's just that the hours I spend outside of work are my own. I try to do my food shopping at odd hours; on Sundays when people are home watching sports, early in the morning when most sane people are asleep, and when I do have to wade into Stop & Shop during peak hours, I wear a hoodie, hat, and iPod to keep a low profile. It feels sometimes like tiptoeing through a minefield. This, I'm sure, says more about me than it does humanity, or does it? It frightens me sometimes thinking about the routine of my life. Work, run, drive to Philly to rehearse, and repeat until completely numb. There are so many reasons for not craving mental illness; the hospitalizations, the weeks (months?) of not feeling safe leaving the house, the liver toxicity from certain medications. The one upside, and it pulls at me like a junkie to dope, is that you never live the same day twice. The days may be horrifying or bless you with the intoxicating ease of mania, but they are NEVER the same. I sometimes long for that.
I guess the bottom line is that I'm going to try to write about something more than miles, weather, and gear...
As an aside, I could not bring myself to discuss my foray into online dating. Let's just say that it reminds me of window shopping for hookers in the Red Light District in Amsterdam. That will have to do for now.
This site should be more than a training log. Honestly, the training isn't even training anymore. There are no races, no goals, no set mileage. I've been running half as far as I've wanted to, and then turning around and running back. Simple. There are technical things that have changed. I got orthotics and am running pain free. For now. Other than that there really isn't much to write about from a running perspective other than to say that it's much more enjoyable than it has been in a while. Having said that, this site should incorporate ALL of my lives. I'm well aware that I have less than a handful of readers and am basically writing to myself (which is apparently my favorite topic) but fuck it, who cares. I write, I play music, I work in the medical field, and I've stuck my retarded head into the even more retarded world of online dating (more on that later). After being inspired by a few blogs that I follow ( DIRTSURFING: http://dirtsurfinagain.blogspot.com/ , EVAN HONE: http://evanak-onemoremile.blogspot.com/ ) I've decided that I can do better job than I've done in the past. I wish to christ I knew how to make one of those hotlink things rather than having you cut and paste the link to those two great sites, I really do.
This winter was difficult. Outside matched in and what that meant is that for two months I shut down. It snowed and I retreated from things that I cared greatly for. I became sick and didn't have the desire or will to fight it, so I laid in bed for over a month. This is nothing new, but it is new to my world since I've started running through the woods. I knew it would end but I didn't know how long I would be held under. That's a huge change from the past, where I was never sure if the feeling of going under would have an end.
So... I'm a writer. Not of the often smart ass and sarcastic shit I write here but something that I hope is of substance. My book of prose, entitled "Pulling Scars From The Night Time Sky" ends where it began, on a park bench in Weehawken, New Jersey, overlooking the Hudson River; looking out upon the Manhattan skyline, which author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. once referred to as Skyscraper National Park. I started writing it in early 2000 and wrote the last page on December 1, 2010. It is the story of, in the simplest terms, a broken boy and his journey through mental illness, homelessness, and abject failure; the loss of anything and everything that ever mattered to him, and the attempt to put those shattered pieces back together again. It stands at over 400 pages and will probably never be published. It does not matter. What matters is that the boy that started writing the book at the onset of the new millennium lived long enough to write that final entry. There was very little likelihood that that would happen.
I suppose there should be stories on this blog. Stories of insane nights and equally as insane actions with hopelessly insane friends. There are none. I spend my non work hours alone. Alone. I split from work, lace up, and head into the woods to my temple. Alone. I rarely see anyone back there and when I do, a nod or a quick hello speaks volumes. We understand implicitly. I live in a pretty small town and work for a pretty large hospital. Unlike the welcomed anonymity of Manhattan, I tend to run into my patients up here far more often than I'd like. It's nothing personal, it's just that the hours I spend outside of work are my own. I try to do my food shopping at odd hours; on Sundays when people are home watching sports, early in the morning when most sane people are asleep, and when I do have to wade into Stop & Shop during peak hours, I wear a hoodie, hat, and iPod to keep a low profile. It feels sometimes like tiptoeing through a minefield. This, I'm sure, says more about me than it does humanity, or does it? It frightens me sometimes thinking about the routine of my life. Work, run, drive to Philly to rehearse, and repeat until completely numb. There are so many reasons for not craving mental illness; the hospitalizations, the weeks (months?) of not feeling safe leaving the house, the liver toxicity from certain medications. The one upside, and it pulls at me like a junkie to dope, is that you never live the same day twice. The days may be horrifying or bless you with the intoxicating ease of mania, but they are NEVER the same. I sometimes long for that.
I guess the bottom line is that I'm going to try to write about something more than miles, weather, and gear...
As an aside, I could not bring myself to discuss my foray into online dating. Let's just say that it reminds me of window shopping for hookers in the Red Light District in Amsterdam. That will have to do for now.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
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