Season

A strange yellow evening - mild, early Autumn, quiet - along the banks of the swollen Ware River. I'm alone and stop the car, walk down onto the rocks, and listen for a little while. I picked corn for the first time in many years today and noticed that even my youngest sibling's hair is starting to go grey. We all celebrated our mother's upcoming 80th birthday and, in the background, worried for one of us who couldn't be there because he was in the emergency department waiting to be admitted. My daughter and youngest son learned to pick corn today and probably had thoughts of their own regarding the way things move.

Sleep and wakefulness

Rainy night filled with a long sleep and dreams. The unconscious seems hard at work trying to show me something.

The voice you hear when you're reading should feel like a friend

Days ticking by. It's wrong to let one pass without feeling it on your skin - the sun, the breeze, the weather. Yesterday, I put in nine or ten hours of tedious work. Nothing strenuous and only "exhausting" in its repetition and its blandness. I should be glad for not having to break rocks for my daily bread. But the need to sleep came upon me early and stayed right up until I had to start work again this morning. This fuzzy drowsy ring around my brain. 

It feels like the momentum of change, the energy that was moving me through a new awareness, has waned. Without wind, I'm left to paddle with hands and feet. They call this part the Work. 

While you work

Look at your irritation. Such a well worn pattern. Something you could very easily sidestep and avoid, but you choose to take it on the chin every time and react in kind. Notice your irritation and how it impacts the unsuspecting. It's a sucker punch they don't deserve or see coming. Keep your hands in your pockets. Whistle. Maybe even smile. 

Command

Magic, synchronicity, kismet, delusion

Realize they told you you'd have to die 

A terminal exhalation

The time of the sacrificial lamb has passed

Lay to rest the tragic victim, broken and spent

And continue on, new

Adult education

The depths have been stirred. There's work going on in my dreams. Connections are being made providing me with actionable intelligence. Now, I've got to act on it. This feeling of significance between days and what I'm being presented with after so much dead time.

Running (and walking) this morning with a tight right lower leg, I paid attention to how my mind works. The thoughts that go through, the comparisons, judgments, colorations. I see a red door and I want to paint it black. 

Envy, they tell me, is my deadly sin. 

At the end of the trail, I said hello to another runner finishing his run. In the car, Bruce Springsteen (who turns 74 today) was telling me about a darkness on the edge of town. 

I know it, Bruce. 

Well everybody's got a secret, son

Something that they just can't face

Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it

They carry it with them every step that they take

Til some day they just cut it loose

Cut it loose or let it drag 'em down

Where no one asks any questions 

Or looks too long in your face

In the darkness on the edge of town

In the darkness on the edge of town

Friday

A cool morning sleep in. Time now for a run and to take care of business.

It took a while to get out there, and at the half-way point my right lower leg had tightened up and did not appear to want to release. I thought I could probably run through it, but why? Just walk. Be nice to the damn thing. You need it. And so that's what I did, until it got a little looser and then I ran again. No need for crushing it. Just keep going. And the sun reflected up off the water which I was admiring through the color changing leaves with great appreciation. 

Not long ago, a week or two, I had the experience of falling in love with all the people (and dogs) I encountered on this rail trail. I said hello to all of them. About half did not return the greeting. I could see them suffering, withdrawn, trapped inside, and I felt for them. I touched my heart as if to send healing or love or both. In that moment, it was all true. 

I've fallen somewhat back into my old headspace in which less kind thoughts come to mind when I see someone else coming down the trail. But I'm aware of them - the people and the thoughts. I wave to them both. 

When I got home, I sat in the car and watched the bees working hard among the tangled grass and fading goldenrod living out the last of their purpose seemingly free of anxiety content to do as they must. 

Treat yourself like someone you love, she said.

It's time to do something to address it. Now that your hair is white. Now that your kids are basically grown. Now that you have time to look at yourself and understand that things need fixing. I lived a decade in this house as a dust bunny. If that seems like an exaggeration, maybe then an odd bipedal daddy longlegs patrolling the unmolested network of cobwebs, high and low, in the quiet darkness. Let this last few years be something else. Something brighter.

And another thing

Dispose of, replace, repair. There's much to do here.

Rail trail

I went for a run around dusk on the rail trail. You and I ran there once or twice about ten years ago. I remember you as competitive. "Keep up," you'd often say. It was a cool evening and I just took my time on this one. Base building is mostly done with time on your feet. I'm going to need a broad base for an 84 hour trip exactly a year from now. Fifty-one minutes last night. That's the longest run I've taken in recent memory.

Later, on a cool sunny afternoon as the winds of the outside edge of a hurricane blew through the leaves, I strapped on a 35 pound pack and walked a seven mile loop over roots and rocks, up and down small hills. That's a good training loop. I plan to use it more in the future with my house as the resupply - eat, drink and rest. I need some wool hiking socks though. My feet began to squawk a little in their soggy cotton toward the end. 

After the owl

After the owl, the night remained quiet. I opened the slider and slept in the cool air. Dreams came. Strange ones, but they slipped away from my remembering. Awake in the dark now, getting ready to join the traffic. 

Who?

The new phone arrives via UPS in the middle of a deluge. The driver, wearing a large transparent plastic bag, places my phone, boxed and wrapped inside another transparent plastic bag, on my doorstep. I unbox the phone, which I need to perform the job I am paid to do and could not do today, and read about the sim card installation. I'm supposed to be installing the sim card from my old phone into this new phone so that the elements of my old life can be transferred into this new space and I can pick up much as I was, right from where I left off, on Friday late afternoon. But that old sim card is lost in the world and I have only this new one to install. A blank slate free of apps, contacts, photographs, text messages, voice mails, and e-mails. I am a man free of history at this moment. Weightless and without depth or substance.

Two forward, one back

Friday, in a flurry of activity, I shifted from maybe to yes. I dove right in. In a flurry of activity, I took the first couple of steps I needed to take to get it off the ground. I spent money which I'd been loathe to do. I made phone calls and sent text messages. Right up until the point at which I lost my phone, in a flurry of activity. I retraced my steps, revisited all of my stops, interviewed people, did everything I could think of except rip the seats out of my car, but it was gone. I had insurance on it, but there was still a "deductible" to pay. The replacement is being shipped now. Ok, I've got time to take a breath but I shall not be deterred. 

Terminally tense

If the muscles in your neck, shoulders, and upper back could exhale deeply, what would that feel like? I certainly don't know but I'm trying to find out. 

Reminder

Forward, friend. There's a reason Lot's wife became a pillar of salt in looking back. Stay alive, go this way.

Movement

That box containing slip covers I ordered for the fake leather couch and chair that a former terrible roommate's dog destroyed has been sitting on the floor in the living room for more than a year now I think. I really have completely lost track of how long the box just sat there unopened. What I noticed though is that it's presence served as a sort of energetic dam which was inhibiting the flow of energy through the house. There's a lot of that sort of thing happening in this place. I've been addressing it these last few days. 

Turning

September first and the first chilly morning of the season with temps probably in the low 40's. I went out to the Rutland State Park portion of the Central Mass Rail Trail and ran continuously for 30 minutes. For a runner, this does not sound like much. For an ultra runner, like even less. But for me, a guy who is just now emerging from a metaphorical dusty coffin, it feels like victory. It's been a long time since I ran last. Maybe years. 

What a beautiful morning. The woods are still green but the seasonal change is in the air. At the end of the trail I could see my breath after getting carried away and sprinting for the last few seconds. No need for that stuff right now. That's greed or vanity or something, but the effort made me gag a couple of times as if to discipline me. Humility. It's enough to show up and do what you said you would do. And this morning, I did that. 

The surface I ran on was a flat, hard-packed, dirt and gravel. Probably a lot like the Cowboy Trail in northern Nebraska which is home to the Cowboy 200 Ultramarathon. Two-hundred miles inside of 84 hours. I heard about it last month and the idea has crept into me. Today's run marked the first milestone in my vague, not-entirely-imaginary, training plan. I'm still contemplating whether I want to take the race on or not. 

I'm going through some positive changes right now, and for the last few days everything seems possible. This is in stark contrast to the couple or few years of steady depletion and depression I'm emerging from in which nothing positive seemed possible. I'm afraid of falling back. I don't want to go back in there. 

Something in me just now said, "Then don't!". 

Registration for 2024's race hasn't opened yet. This year's race occurs later this month.