I will be happy with a four hour marathon. Seeing how last week’s run went I will be content just to run the race and cross the line, but if I can maintain my health and stick to the training I think a four hour finish is doable. So there it is, a time: my first goal within a goal. And now for the next: the calendar. Today is the day to formally commit. In a small way, I am motivated today by a deadline: at my half marathon last November I was given a couple of $10.00 coupons, part of the virtual goody bag all runners are given, and they will expire today. I could still sign up after today, but the cost goes up and the slots are limited and time is running out.
There were a few different races promoted by the goody bag, and I start to realize that I’ll need some interim races to keep me in shape through the summer. And just like that, I’ve signed up for several races in the next six months. First, in two weeks, a half marathon along Milwaukee’s lakefront. Then, in August, with summer at its peak, another half over the hills of Madison. There is another possibility for something in July, up in Michigan, but I’ll put that on hold for now. But here, finally —this is it, the big one, can’t believe I’m doing this, haven’t actually done anything yet but it’s time, and it’s on the books now: in Madison, Wisconsin, on November 8, the Marathon.
The next six months may be filled with uncertainties and hesitations, but let me do my best to purge them all at once. I will be busy, too busy from time to time, to fit in two and three and four hour training runs. It will not be easy to make time. It will rain at the end of spring and it will be hot in the summer and cold and windy in the fall. I will be sore now and then, with blisters and charlie horses and tired limbs and, as I’m already learning, more peculiar ailments: bleeding nipples, lingering toenail shades, chafed skin, numb extremities. I will not always be on track with pace and distance goals. I will occasionally have to resort to the treadmill, with all its limitations, and this will throw my routine off. I will surely get another cold or two, or maybe even worse, a strained muscle or the flu or who knows what else could set me back a week or more. Some days I will just be plain tired. I will not always be motivated, maybe even discouraged, and I will wonder, am already wondering, why I have chosen these Madison hills for my ultimate run. But God help me, I’m gonna do this! And just to prove the point, let me set this pen aside. It’s time to run...
...And so it was, perhaps as a sign, certainly as an encouragement, that in the afternoon on the last day of May, a day after a 5,000 meter race and hours after purging myself of excuses, full of a newfound commitment and out to prove a point, I went on an amazing run. It had been cold this morning, a pre-purge excuse, so I skipped th run before breakfast routine and instead took to the path in the late afternoon before the sun went down. I thought I’d do a more laid back effort, something longer than last week’s short bursts but with no great pressure on time and more concentration on a steady pace. I decided to do eight minute miles for as long as I could sustain them. Yesterday’s fast 5K had begun with a 7:15 pace in the first mile; today I might let the first lap go faster than 8:00, but not too fast. And so it went: Mile 1, 7:30. Mile 2, 8:00. Mile 3, 8:00. Mile 4, 8:10. By the time I reached Mile 6 I had slipped to an 8:29 pace, but the 10K split was a very encouraging 50:30, my best time for that length in a long time. I felt great, too, so I kept running beyond my first thoughts and all the way to 13.1 miles, maintaining a fairly steady pace and, ultimately, shattering my personal record by more than five minutes.
Including training runs, prior to today I had run this half marathon distance ten times. Last November, in training for my first official run, I did not reach that mark until about two weeks before the race, but then I ran it four times in training, each time clocking in at about two hours. The posted race time was even a little better, at 1:58.30, and I was content. I did not train for that stretch again until the beginning of this month, prepping for last week’s big race, but I built up to four times in the week and a half leading up to the race, bumping my time down to 1:58 a few days before the weekend. My second big race itself was a downer, though, and with that bad cold, a double-run exhaustion and more hills than I could handle I finished at just over 2:04.
But today was a different story. More than content, more than happy, today I am thrilled with the time I posted. Nenikekamos! That cold-laden run is behind me, because today, just a week later, in my first rerun of the distance, with a healthy body, an easy schedule, no hills and a good pace, I eclipsed all prior personal bests with a 1:52:45. And with that, the next step forward begins!
We are different, in essence, from other men [and women]. If you want to win something, run 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon.
—Emil Zatopek, four time Olympic gold
medalist (5K, 1952; 10K, 1948 and 1952;
marathon, 1952).
Tuesday, November 8
Monday, November 7
Joy: Whatever The Distance
There is, while we’re at it, some question about the route and the distance of that historical legendary run. The ancient Olympic games, which spanned more than a thousand years from 776 BCE to 394 CE, well established by the time the Battle of Marathon was fought, never had a race longer than its “dolichos,” (long race) of about three to five miles, and there never was a marathon race, per se, until the modern Olympic organizers conceived of it. The first Olympic marathon in 1896 was set at 24.85 miles, literally following a path from Marathon to Athens, but that distance by various routes can range from a hilly 21 miles to a flat 25.5 miles. In 1908, London declared their Olympic course would be 25 miles, but by the time the route was mapped out to pass through palace gates and end with a final stadium lap it had stretched to 26.2 miles. By 1920, Belgium had extended it even further, to 26.56 miles. Finally, in 1921, the International Olympic Committee standardized it to the London length. For now, though, let’s just call the Marathon stretch, roughly twenty something miles, what it has become: the ultimate dolichos, a torchlight to follow, a doable but formidable killer of a challenge, and, if what they tell me is true, a joy to run.
But of course I have not yet run that race. Indeed, these last few days, even as I have been writing about the Philippidean distance, my mind and physical efforts have been focused on another race with a more immediate goal: the 5K run, five kilometers or 3.1 miles long: effectively, going back to the ancient games, a 5,000 meter dolichos. Today was my culmination of that accessible joy: a fundraiser at the middle school of, over time, five of my nieces and nephews: the kids, as it happens, of my brother-in-law who first told me that Philippides story. Eric had run the Chicago Marathon a few years ago, and he and my sister Anne had been early encouragers to my expanding runs. I ran their same fundraiser a year before and I was happy to return, especially as this year my youngest niece and nephew, seven year old twins, were running the race with me.
It was a change-up to my training, though. For the last month or two I had been prepping exclusively for last weekend’s two day run, increasing my regimen to the point that I was alternating every other day with 6.2 and 13.1 mile distances. With this pattern, a 3.1 mile run would seem to be easy, but my split times had reflected the longer distance pace and now, suddenly, I fell compelled to amp up the effort. Unfortunately, after that double run (and just before this journal began) I had to take a couple of days off, out of necessity: that last race had been a tough one. The course was hillier than I had trained for and I was cursed with a late spring head cold in the days leading up to the effort. As the congestion got the best of me I finished Sunday’s half marathon with a deliberate easiness, stopping at every water station in the second half and even walking at the end of the toughest hill. My end time was almost six minutes slower than my training time.
All things considered, I was happy just to have crossed the finish line, but then I rested hard on Monday and Tuesday and it wasn’t until Wednesday that I ran again, just three days before the fundraiser. That day’s run was my first concerted 5K distance in over eight months, and my pace time showed it. But the challenge was ahead of me, so I ran the same stretch again on Thursday, then Thursday evening, then Friday. The times were starting to drop, still thirty second slower than last fall’s treadmill bursts, but I had cut off more than a minute in two days and was starting to feel good about it.
On race day eve, I spent the night at my sister’s house, and we loaded up with pizza and beer and a little whiskey. Not wise, I know, but this felt good too. And this morning I woke up early, hydrated myself in measures equal to the evening intake, did a few stretch routines and was ready to run.
Let me back up a bit though. I am still relatively new to this life, and the 5K race is still kind of a big deal for me. It was not so long ago, three and a half years back, that I ran my first long run. It was a memorable moment, not just to run and finish but to go through all it took to get to that starting line. Six months earlier I had been 85 pounds heavier, slowly recovering from back surgery a few years before and demonstrably unable to run for more than a quarter mile without getting completely winded. The wake up call was a Friday night hospital visit with scary high blood pressure, keeping me in the emergency room for more than six hours. They released me with a prescription for Lisinopril, but those six hours set the tone for the next six months and longer. It also forced me to decision: it was time to turn it all around. Not only was I approaching 250 pounds, I was approaching the big 50 and then the even bigger 51, the age at which my dad had died of a heart attack. I also had two single-parented teenagers to think about, and I wanted to live longer, for their sake, but I also wanted to feel better than I had been feeling.
That was April 2012. I still keep the hospital wrist band in my medicine chest. By October I had cut ten inches off my waistline, and by November, two days after Thanksgiving, I was running three miles in thirty degree weather. And I was overjoyed. Indeed, not only did I finish that first race, I won my age group. I had just turned 50 a few weeks before, but right then I felt very young. My time was 26:30: not so impressive in retrospect, and I would not have won the age group in most races, but this was a local food pantry fundraiser with only four of us in the men over 50 category, and two of the four had walked the course. It still felt good, though, and to this day my “COOL 5K” medal hangs from my rear view mirror. Someday I hope to buy one of those 26.2 ovals for my bumper, for all to see, but that 5K medal means just as much to me.
Which brings me to today’s 5K. I may never qualify for the Boston Marathon. For men aged 50-54 the cutoff time is three and a half hours, and my best posted half marathon, after only two so far, is 1:58. Sure, there is room and time for improvement, but a realistic goal, in my mind anyway, is to simply double my half-time. On the other hand, after today...
First of all, it was a fun day, and a pleasure just to cheer my niece and nephew on as they finished their first distance race. It was also nice to feel healthy again without any lingering effect from last week’s cold or the soreness the hills had given me. But best of all was the finish: I needed very little time to catch my breath and still had a lot of run in me, but not only that, I won my age group again and even posted my best 5K time ever, at 23:10. The mind starts to work: imagine, a 46:20 10K, three minutes faster than my best treadmill time, then extrapolate that to a 1:38 half and a 3:15 full. No way! But add some unshakeable hope and suddenly I’m in Boston territory!
It will be, as it has been, a joy just to finish the race, and I will be happy to wake up to run a local marathon that requires no qualifying time and to last the 26 miles. That 26.2 oval is all I need for a medal, and I will display it proudly. Meanwhile, yes, I will track my times, work to cut the seconds off as I add the miles on and do my best to stick to the training regimen, but it will be a joy, as it has been, whatever the clock says at the end. It will be a victory. As it should be and as it is, with every race.
The important thing... is not so much to win as to take part.. The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have won but to have fought well.
—Pierre de Couobertin, founder of the modern
Olympics and promoter of the marathon, in
what would become the Olympic creed, 1908
But of course I have not yet run that race. Indeed, these last few days, even as I have been writing about the Philippidean distance, my mind and physical efforts have been focused on another race with a more immediate goal: the 5K run, five kilometers or 3.1 miles long: effectively, going back to the ancient games, a 5,000 meter dolichos. Today was my culmination of that accessible joy: a fundraiser at the middle school of, over time, five of my nieces and nephews: the kids, as it happens, of my brother-in-law who first told me that Philippides story. Eric had run the Chicago Marathon a few years ago, and he and my sister Anne had been early encouragers to my expanding runs. I ran their same fundraiser a year before and I was happy to return, especially as this year my youngest niece and nephew, seven year old twins, were running the race with me.
It was a change-up to my training, though. For the last month or two I had been prepping exclusively for last weekend’s two day run, increasing my regimen to the point that I was alternating every other day with 6.2 and 13.1 mile distances. With this pattern, a 3.1 mile run would seem to be easy, but my split times had reflected the longer distance pace and now, suddenly, I fell compelled to amp up the effort. Unfortunately, after that double run (and just before this journal began) I had to take a couple of days off, out of necessity: that last race had been a tough one. The course was hillier than I had trained for and I was cursed with a late spring head cold in the days leading up to the effort. As the congestion got the best of me I finished Sunday’s half marathon with a deliberate easiness, stopping at every water station in the second half and even walking at the end of the toughest hill. My end time was almost six minutes slower than my training time.
All things considered, I was happy just to have crossed the finish line, but then I rested hard on Monday and Tuesday and it wasn’t until Wednesday that I ran again, just three days before the fundraiser. That day’s run was my first concerted 5K distance in over eight months, and my pace time showed it. But the challenge was ahead of me, so I ran the same stretch again on Thursday, then Thursday evening, then Friday. The times were starting to drop, still thirty second slower than last fall’s treadmill bursts, but I had cut off more than a minute in two days and was starting to feel good about it.
On race day eve, I spent the night at my sister’s house, and we loaded up with pizza and beer and a little whiskey. Not wise, I know, but this felt good too. And this morning I woke up early, hydrated myself in measures equal to the evening intake, did a few stretch routines and was ready to run.
Let me back up a bit though. I am still relatively new to this life, and the 5K race is still kind of a big deal for me. It was not so long ago, three and a half years back, that I ran my first long run. It was a memorable moment, not just to run and finish but to go through all it took to get to that starting line. Six months earlier I had been 85 pounds heavier, slowly recovering from back surgery a few years before and demonstrably unable to run for more than a quarter mile without getting completely winded. The wake up call was a Friday night hospital visit with scary high blood pressure, keeping me in the emergency room for more than six hours. They released me with a prescription for Lisinopril, but those six hours set the tone for the next six months and longer. It also forced me to decision: it was time to turn it all around. Not only was I approaching 250 pounds, I was approaching the big 50 and then the even bigger 51, the age at which my dad had died of a heart attack. I also had two single-parented teenagers to think about, and I wanted to live longer, for their sake, but I also wanted to feel better than I had been feeling.
That was April 2012. I still keep the hospital wrist band in my medicine chest. By October I had cut ten inches off my waistline, and by November, two days after Thanksgiving, I was running three miles in thirty degree weather. And I was overjoyed. Indeed, not only did I finish that first race, I won my age group. I had just turned 50 a few weeks before, but right then I felt very young. My time was 26:30: not so impressive in retrospect, and I would not have won the age group in most races, but this was a local food pantry fundraiser with only four of us in the men over 50 category, and two of the four had walked the course. It still felt good, though, and to this day my “COOL 5K” medal hangs from my rear view mirror. Someday I hope to buy one of those 26.2 ovals for my bumper, for all to see, but that 5K medal means just as much to me.
Which brings me to today’s 5K. I may never qualify for the Boston Marathon. For men aged 50-54 the cutoff time is three and a half hours, and my best posted half marathon, after only two so far, is 1:58. Sure, there is room and time for improvement, but a realistic goal, in my mind anyway, is to simply double my half-time. On the other hand, after today...
First of all, it was a fun day, and a pleasure just to cheer my niece and nephew on as they finished their first distance race. It was also nice to feel healthy again without any lingering effect from last week’s cold or the soreness the hills had given me. But best of all was the finish: I needed very little time to catch my breath and still had a lot of run in me, but not only that, I won my age group again and even posted my best 5K time ever, at 23:10. The mind starts to work: imagine, a 46:20 10K, three minutes faster than my best treadmill time, then extrapolate that to a 1:38 half and a 3:15 full. No way! But add some unshakeable hope and suddenly I’m in Boston territory!
It will be, as it has been, a joy just to finish the race, and I will be happy to wake up to run a local marathon that requires no qualifying time and to last the 26 miles. That 26.2 oval is all I need for a medal, and I will display it proudly. Meanwhile, yes, I will track my times, work to cut the seconds off as I add the miles on and do my best to stick to the training regimen, but it will be a joy, as it has been, whatever the clock says at the end. It will be a victory. As it should be and as it is, with every race.
The important thing... is not so much to win as to take part.. The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have won but to have fought well.
—Pierre de Couobertin, founder of the modern
Olympics and promoter of the marathon, in
what would become the Olympic creed, 1908
Sunday, November 6
Narrative: As History Would Have It
“You know, the first marathon runner died at the finish line.” So a chuckling brother-in-law told me when I mentioned my big goal. Very funny, my brother. But it is true for us all, in a way: we will all die at the end of the race. At my age, I suspect it will happen at some point in the next thirty or forty years. For the first marathoner, though, it was reportedly more immediate. His name, according to Lucian, a Greek writer who told the story in passing, was Philippides, although some prefer to translate the name from an earlier, less fatal history by Herodotus, related 500 years closer to the event. Herodotus wrote of a day-runner named Pheidippides who did not immediately die when the race was done.
In his own time, Pheidippides would inspire an annual torch race ceremony, but he was primarily a forerunner to the events at Marathon, a field of battle twenty-some miles outside of Athens from which Lucian’s Philippides was later said to have ventured after, and not before, the battle was won. Pheidippides undertook a longer journey before the battle, and he ran peripherally, from Athens to Sparta and back. In time Heracleides and others, including Plutarch and later Lucian, started revising the details and making the runner a legend, as if the original day-runner story weren’t already remarkable.
I like the Lucian tale, and I will retell his version, but let it first be noted: Herodotus was called the Father of History, and it is his account, told thirty or forty years after the event, that is about as accurate as we can expect. Yes, Pheidippides was a long-distance runner, and yes, he inspired a festival run, but it wasn’t to or from Marathon, it wasn’t the 26.2 miles we are now familiar with and he didn’t declare victory and collapse at the finish line. In fact, if we accept the first report, the span he covered between Athens and Sparta was an incredible distance of six marathon races, and he ran it twice. And yet not so incredible: there is an obscure but real race run today that is directly attributed to that journey: the Spartathlon, 153 miles long, and despite how super-human that may sound, people actually run it and have even fit it into a very long day, with the best time under 21 hours. True! And history-based. But then, eventually, came a satirist named Lucian, who wrote, among other things, his own “True History” (really!), a more accessible set of essays for the masses. Here then, in the spirit of Lucian, is my own retelling of the tale:
And so it was from the fields of Fennel, or what the Greeks call “Marathon” (chew on that!), that a professional dispatch runner was called upon to deliver fresh news from the battlefront. “Go to Athens, twenty six miles around the corner, and tell them what has happened here,” the soldiers said. The man, named Philippides, lover of horses, set off immediately. It was in the heat of September and the way across Attica was hilly and indirect, and all the horses he cared for were tired from the battle and never good for more than a six mile run anyway, so Philippides (or Pheidippides if you prefer) made his way on foot. When at last he arrived in Athens, he ran straight to the authorities and, with his breath nearly spent, declared, “Victory! Nike! Rejoice, for we have won the battle!” And then, his mission complete, he collapsed and died. And to this day, very few people talk about the three hundred miles he once ran from Athens to Sparta and back, or how he was one of many on the battlefields of Fennel. No, they talk about that three or four hour summer run he ran, and how he put all that he had into it, and how in the end he raised his hands up and called it as he saw it, a win for the team and an accomplishment beyond the run itself. And yes, in the end, he died, as we all will one day, but not until after our final race is run.
Did this really happen? Of course it did! This was not another legend of the gods, like so many other Greek stories; this was a reflection of mortality, yet also of will and purpose and endurance and all that makes us human. And this is how we remember the run of Philippides, or Pheidippides if you will, but even in the name it is less about the runner than it is about the run, more about the dramatic race than the original dispatch. It was a run that followed a battle with news to report and victory to declare, but even the name that once belonged to the battle and the news and the victory now describes, above all else, the runner’s achievement: Marathon!
Footnote to history: Sometimes truth is what we make it, but let me try to get it right. Lucian (125-180 AD) did write A True History, an extensive work that did not include his account of the runner Philippides. That mention was limited to a few brief sentences in A Slip of the Tongue in Salutation, a short side essay about the cultural habit of greeting people with a careless wish for joy. And I have let Lucian inspire me to retell his tale, but with a careless regard for truth, so, more carefully now: The Battle of Marathon occurred in 490 BC (or BCE, if you will). Herodotus chronicled the event in Histories, ca. 440 BCE, and his account refers to a day-runner named Pheidippides, or in some later redrafts Philippides, but with no mention of a post-battle run or the declaration “Nenikekamos” (Joy, we won!). More than five hundred years later, Mestius Plutarchus of Chaermea, citing a lost work by Heracleides of Pontus (390-310 BCE), related the joy account in “On the Glory of Athens” in Volume IV of his Moral Essays (ca 100 AD (or CE if you’d rather)). Heracleides called the runner Thersippus, wrote Plutarch, but “most historians declare that it was Eucles who ran in full armor, hot from the battle, and bursting in at the doors of the first men of the State, could only say “Hail! We are victorious!’ and straightaway expired. (From Plutarch, Moralia, tr. Cherniss/Humbold, Loeb Library 1911). Those other works Plutarch referred to have never been found, and thus his account of a Marathon to Athens run is the earliest mention we have, 590 years after it was supposed to have occurred. Sometimes history is how we take it.
Bringing news of Marathon, he found the archons seated, in suspense regarding the issue of the battle. ‘Joy, we win!’ he said, and died upon his message, breathing his last word Joy.”
— from A Slip of the Tongue in Salutation,
by Lucian (ca 180 AD; tr. Fowler, 1905).
In his own time, Pheidippides would inspire an annual torch race ceremony, but he was primarily a forerunner to the events at Marathon, a field of battle twenty-some miles outside of Athens from which Lucian’s Philippides was later said to have ventured after, and not before, the battle was won. Pheidippides undertook a longer journey before the battle, and he ran peripherally, from Athens to Sparta and back. In time Heracleides and others, including Plutarch and later Lucian, started revising the details and making the runner a legend, as if the original day-runner story weren’t already remarkable.
I like the Lucian tale, and I will retell his version, but let it first be noted: Herodotus was called the Father of History, and it is his account, told thirty or forty years after the event, that is about as accurate as we can expect. Yes, Pheidippides was a long-distance runner, and yes, he inspired a festival run, but it wasn’t to or from Marathon, it wasn’t the 26.2 miles we are now familiar with and he didn’t declare victory and collapse at the finish line. In fact, if we accept the first report, the span he covered between Athens and Sparta was an incredible distance of six marathon races, and he ran it twice. And yet not so incredible: there is an obscure but real race run today that is directly attributed to that journey: the Spartathlon, 153 miles long, and despite how super-human that may sound, people actually run it and have even fit it into a very long day, with the best time under 21 hours. True! And history-based. But then, eventually, came a satirist named Lucian, who wrote, among other things, his own “True History” (really!), a more accessible set of essays for the masses. Here then, in the spirit of Lucian, is my own retelling of the tale:
And so it was from the fields of Fennel, or what the Greeks call “Marathon” (chew on that!), that a professional dispatch runner was called upon to deliver fresh news from the battlefront. “Go to Athens, twenty six miles around the corner, and tell them what has happened here,” the soldiers said. The man, named Philippides, lover of horses, set off immediately. It was in the heat of September and the way across Attica was hilly and indirect, and all the horses he cared for were tired from the battle and never good for more than a six mile run anyway, so Philippides (or Pheidippides if you prefer) made his way on foot. When at last he arrived in Athens, he ran straight to the authorities and, with his breath nearly spent, declared, “Victory! Nike! Rejoice, for we have won the battle!” And then, his mission complete, he collapsed and died. And to this day, very few people talk about the three hundred miles he once ran from Athens to Sparta and back, or how he was one of many on the battlefields of Fennel. No, they talk about that three or four hour summer run he ran, and how he put all that he had into it, and how in the end he raised his hands up and called it as he saw it, a win for the team and an accomplishment beyond the run itself. And yes, in the end, he died, as we all will one day, but not until after our final race is run.
Did this really happen? Of course it did! This was not another legend of the gods, like so many other Greek stories; this was a reflection of mortality, yet also of will and purpose and endurance and all that makes us human. And this is how we remember the run of Philippides, or Pheidippides if you will, but even in the name it is less about the runner than it is about the run, more about the dramatic race than the original dispatch. It was a run that followed a battle with news to report and victory to declare, but even the name that once belonged to the battle and the news and the victory now describes, above all else, the runner’s achievement: Marathon!
Footnote to history: Sometimes truth is what we make it, but let me try to get it right. Lucian (125-180 AD) did write A True History, an extensive work that did not include his account of the runner Philippides. That mention was limited to a few brief sentences in A Slip of the Tongue in Salutation, a short side essay about the cultural habit of greeting people with a careless wish for joy. And I have let Lucian inspire me to retell his tale, but with a careless regard for truth, so, more carefully now: The Battle of Marathon occurred in 490 BC (or BCE, if you will). Herodotus chronicled the event in Histories, ca. 440 BCE, and his account refers to a day-runner named Pheidippides, or in some later redrafts Philippides, but with no mention of a post-battle run or the declaration “Nenikekamos” (Joy, we won!). More than five hundred years later, Mestius Plutarchus of Chaermea, citing a lost work by Heracleides of Pontus (390-310 BCE), related the joy account in “On the Glory of Athens” in Volume IV of his Moral Essays (ca 100 AD (or CE if you’d rather)). Heracleides called the runner Thersippus, wrote Plutarch, but “most historians declare that it was Eucles who ran in full armor, hot from the battle, and bursting in at the doors of the first men of the State, could only say “Hail! We are victorious!’ and straightaway expired. (From Plutarch, Moralia, tr. Cherniss/Humbold, Loeb Library 1911). Those other works Plutarch referred to have never been found, and thus his account of a Marathon to Athens run is the earliest mention we have, 590 years after it was supposed to have occurred. Sometimes history is how we take it.
Bringing news of Marathon, he found the archons seated, in suspense regarding the issue of the battle. ‘Joy, we win!’ he said, and died upon his message, breathing his last word Joy.”
— from A Slip of the Tongue in Salutation,
by Lucian (ca 180 AD; tr. Fowler, 1905).
Saturday, November 5
Accountability: Running The Race
But where was I? Oh yes. Accountability. Another word to chew. I am committing, with this running account, to an indelible narrative. These words are not just to masticate but to keep me honest. As long as I’m chewing, though, let me spit out some gristle. Accountability does not mean the ability to account but rather the state of being accountable. In other words, I am not striving to run every day to demonstrate an ability to run, I am running with purpose towards that larger goal, and by these words a declared goal. If somehow I do not reach that goal, these words, as long as I keep writing them, will serve to show the effort or, perhaps, the lack thereof. But of course I have not set out to on this writing/running project merely to reveal successes and shortcomings. I make this effort with an intended commitment to get to the finish line.
Ah yes, the finish line! The glory, the relief, the grand finale. That larger goal I’ve been chewing on. But if I am going to be held accountable there will have to be more to this than running on and writing down, more than this initial reflection of the starting gun (“ready, set, goal!”) and the checkered flag of the final pages. Readers, skip ahead, see for yourselves if I get there. But then come back, because I want to share with you the substance of the race. It is that substance, after all, that keeps me going.
Every once in a while, the story is told of a marathon cheater who crosses the finish line but is later discovered to have taken a shortcut. Why? Glory, I suppose, and a more immediate gratification. But hers (I will explain the pronoun) was a race without accountability and she was a racer without much of a story to tell, one who started, finished and then put the book away, or rather had it thrown at her when th cheat was revealed. Experience tells me — and who doesn’t know this? — that a race with a starting shot and a photo finish but nothing in between isn’t much to talk about. But I wonder, what was her story, such as it was?
I remember, from the last incarnation I had read of her, that she was a she: my choice of pronoun was not arbitrary, but of course not relevant either, as there were, it turns out, plenty of men and women who cheated before her. She is this year’s latest example, though, and if I call out her gender it is only because I have nothing else to say about her. She is an empty book with blank pages. They caught he when someone noticed she didn’t show up in any mid-race photos. She didn’t say anything in the article I read, but what could she possibly say? She was, and forever will be, a runner without substance, unremarkable, unaccountable, unless... could there be more to her story than the run?
Let me give her a paragraph. Her name, in this latest pose, is Kendall Schlerr. The race she ran or didn’t run, was the 2015 St. Louis Marathon, and it appears she may not have run it for two years in a row. This year she was briefly deemed the fastest female of the race; last year she was awarded third place, a feat that until this year had not been questioned.
Last year’s time ostensibly qualified her for the Boston Marathon, which as far as I know she also did not run. This year’s race time was, it seemed, under three hours, even though, as internet sleuths later discovered, her last half marathon posted was over two and a half hours long. She fooled people at the St. Louis finish line, though, long enough to get a photo taken with Jackie Joyner Kersee but not long enough to garner the $1,500.00 prize or secure invitations for any more races to come.
Which leads back to that question: Why? Stealing glory and grabbing gratification, yes, but I still have to wonder: for all these words might say, she’s still an empty running suit without a narrative, the ghost the cameras couldn’t capture and, sadly, one of many like her: Mike Rossi, New York, 2015; Tony Gaskill, London, 2010; Dana Patterson, Arizona, 2009; Rosie Ruiz, Boston, 1980; etc, etc. Sure, they have name notoriety and back stories of their own, but they have no story of the run.
I will not dwell further on Kendall and her ilk, but their pseudo-stories nonetheless compel me to consider how I might experience that real moment of crossing the marathon finish line: with integrity and accountability, of course, but more than that, with an exhilaration of having realized what I had been dreaming about for miles before; with a satisfaction, surely, after all the regimen that will have to precede the race; with gratitude, beyond all gratification, for God allowing my knees and legs and lungs to hold out; and, undoubtedly, with perspectives that I cannot begin to fathom now and will not know the night before, or at the morning’s alarm, or at mile 14, 20, 25...
I am eager for this moment. I am eager to finish the race and live in the thrill of the moment, but I am also eager to earn it, for all that it will take.
Whatever work you find to do,
do it with all your might,
for there is neither achievement nor planning nor science,
nor wisdom in Sheol where you are going.
Another thing I have observed under the sun,
that the race is not won by the speediest,
nor the battle by the champions;
it is not the wise who get the food,
nor the intelligent wealth,
nor the learned favor.
Chance and mischance befall them all.
We do not know when our time will come...
— Ecclesiastes 9:10-12a,
by Qoheleth, the Preacher
(New Jerusalem Bible, 1985)
Ah yes, the finish line! The glory, the relief, the grand finale. That larger goal I’ve been chewing on. But if I am going to be held accountable there will have to be more to this than running on and writing down, more than this initial reflection of the starting gun (“ready, set, goal!”) and the checkered flag of the final pages. Readers, skip ahead, see for yourselves if I get there. But then come back, because I want to share with you the substance of the race. It is that substance, after all, that keeps me going.
Every once in a while, the story is told of a marathon cheater who crosses the finish line but is later discovered to have taken a shortcut. Why? Glory, I suppose, and a more immediate gratification. But hers (I will explain the pronoun) was a race without accountability and she was a racer without much of a story to tell, one who started, finished and then put the book away, or rather had it thrown at her when th cheat was revealed. Experience tells me — and who doesn’t know this? — that a race with a starting shot and a photo finish but nothing in between isn’t much to talk about. But I wonder, what was her story, such as it was?
I remember, from the last incarnation I had read of her, that she was a she: my choice of pronoun was not arbitrary, but of course not relevant either, as there were, it turns out, plenty of men and women who cheated before her. She is this year’s latest example, though, and if I call out her gender it is only because I have nothing else to say about her. She is an empty book with blank pages. They caught he when someone noticed she didn’t show up in any mid-race photos. She didn’t say anything in the article I read, but what could she possibly say? She was, and forever will be, a runner without substance, unremarkable, unaccountable, unless... could there be more to her story than the run?
Let me give her a paragraph. Her name, in this latest pose, is Kendall Schlerr. The race she ran or didn’t run, was the 2015 St. Louis Marathon, and it appears she may not have run it for two years in a row. This year she was briefly deemed the fastest female of the race; last year she was awarded third place, a feat that until this year had not been questioned.
Last year’s time ostensibly qualified her for the Boston Marathon, which as far as I know she also did not run. This year’s race time was, it seemed, under three hours, even though, as internet sleuths later discovered, her last half marathon posted was over two and a half hours long. She fooled people at the St. Louis finish line, though, long enough to get a photo taken with Jackie Joyner Kersee but not long enough to garner the $1,500.00 prize or secure invitations for any more races to come.
Which leads back to that question: Why? Stealing glory and grabbing gratification, yes, but I still have to wonder: for all these words might say, she’s still an empty running suit without a narrative, the ghost the cameras couldn’t capture and, sadly, one of many like her: Mike Rossi, New York, 2015; Tony Gaskill, London, 2010; Dana Patterson, Arizona, 2009; Rosie Ruiz, Boston, 1980; etc, etc. Sure, they have name notoriety and back stories of their own, but they have no story of the run.
I will not dwell further on Kendall and her ilk, but their pseudo-stories nonetheless compel me to consider how I might experience that real moment of crossing the marathon finish line: with integrity and accountability, of course, but more than that, with an exhilaration of having realized what I had been dreaming about for miles before; with a satisfaction, surely, after all the regimen that will have to precede the race; with gratitude, beyond all gratification, for God allowing my knees and legs and lungs to hold out; and, undoubtedly, with perspectives that I cannot begin to fathom now and will not know the night before, or at the morning’s alarm, or at mile 14, 20, 25...
I am eager for this moment. I am eager to finish the race and live in the thrill of the moment, but I am also eager to earn it, for all that it will take.
Whatever work you find to do,
do it with all your might,
for there is neither achievement nor planning nor science,
nor wisdom in Sheol where you are going.
Another thing I have observed under the sun,
that the race is not won by the speediest,
nor the battle by the champions;
it is not the wise who get the food,
nor the intelligent wealth,
nor the learned favor.
Chance and mischance befall them all.
We do not know when our time will come...
— Ecclesiastes 9:10-12a,
by Qoheleth, the Preacher
(New Jerusalem Bible, 1985)
Friday, November 4
Marathon: Saying The Word
Goal: Marathon! Not yet set: the goals within the goal, those to be measured by calendar and stopwatch and map. These will be left for the days ahead. They will br noted on these pages from time to time, as they occur to me, but I want this journal to mark the course of that larger more singular project. Indeed, in these first pages let me put aside the history that got me here, my present position, the odds I might give myself. I will worry about these asides tomorrow, even as I set and tweak those other calibrators, but for today...
Let me just chew on that word for a moment: Marathon... Mmmm! The epitomal run. A distance to brag about, the messenger’s challenge, the body’s approachable limits. A number for the bumper, a medal for the wall, just for finishing. A dedication of time and an appreciation of place. An opportunity and, appropos this journal before me, a journey. And yet, not even a full day’s journey, barely a morning’s effort.
And yet again, how many hours, days, months will precede that effort and how long, how much more than a day, might it take to recover from that morning run? Honestly, this will be a luxury of time, a bold claim to stake, especially for someone of my age and station with all that I already have on my calendar and map and watch. But let me make it that, a luxury. Let me take it as such and hold on to it and own it as one might own prominent portfolio items or value it as one should value things that matter most. I have a home, I have family and a career and faith to get me by, but for the next stretch of the way let me also have this: Marathon! A course to run, a race to prepare for and work towards, a distance to rise up to, a goal to pronounce. May 27, 2015, consider it declared: I will be running 26.2 miles, all at once.
It is hardly a unique ambition, this. Four days ago, just last weekend — a little bit of history here — I ran a precedent challenge, a combination 10 kilometer run on a Saturday night and a half marathon the next morning. Not everyone running was there for the one-two punch, but I was hardly alone, and of the two separate races, significantly more people had signed up for the longer 13 mile run. And not all the half-long runners will take the double down dare later this year, but I am sure many will. Many of us!
Based on what I saw last fall, when I had last (and first!) run a halfway race, there were thousands who ran the thirteen miles with me but 1,200 more who signed up for the greater double distance that day, runners like me who had decidedly set their goal and built themselves up to the challenge. And this was just one race in one city, among many others throughout the world assembling thousands upon thousands of runners from early spring to late fall, some running with experience, many experiencing the race for the first time. This time, I will be one of them. And however sore and weary I may be on that day, I will be happy, thrilled to be part of the crowd.
I have come to this decision only today, after a relatively short three mile morning run. Time and circumstance may have me ponder and rethink the decision, but that is why I am writing this down right now. Journals have helped me get to and though previous goals, so here I am again, holding myself to my word. I think I just gave this new journal a name: Accountability. Less the accountancy of daily details, more a running account of my journey, noting what it takes to get to that capital G, the Goal, the biG run the Mega run, the Marathon.
Mmmm... I am still chewing on that word. Eight letters, 26.2 miles long. Nine times the distance I ran this morning. More graspable, only twice the stretch of last Sunday’s run, although that is still as long as I have ever run at one time. But let me keep grasping: my two day race was six miles closer and just seven miles from where I am setting my one day sights: two days, 19 miles will not be the same as a one morning marathon experience, but hold me to this: I will keep reaching...
So, when Persia was dust,
all cried “To Acropolis!”
Run Pheidippides, one race more!
The meed is thy due!
...He flung down his shield,
Ran like fire once more,
And the space ‘twixt the Fennel0field
And Athens was stubble again,
A field which a fire runs through.
— from Pheidippides,
by Robert Browning (1879)
Let me just chew on that word for a moment: Marathon... Mmmm! The epitomal run. A distance to brag about, the messenger’s challenge, the body’s approachable limits. A number for the bumper, a medal for the wall, just for finishing. A dedication of time and an appreciation of place. An opportunity and, appropos this journal before me, a journey. And yet, not even a full day’s journey, barely a morning’s effort.
And yet again, how many hours, days, months will precede that effort and how long, how much more than a day, might it take to recover from that morning run? Honestly, this will be a luxury of time, a bold claim to stake, especially for someone of my age and station with all that I already have on my calendar and map and watch. But let me make it that, a luxury. Let me take it as such and hold on to it and own it as one might own prominent portfolio items or value it as one should value things that matter most. I have a home, I have family and a career and faith to get me by, but for the next stretch of the way let me also have this: Marathon! A course to run, a race to prepare for and work towards, a distance to rise up to, a goal to pronounce. May 27, 2015, consider it declared: I will be running 26.2 miles, all at once.
It is hardly a unique ambition, this. Four days ago, just last weekend — a little bit of history here — I ran a precedent challenge, a combination 10 kilometer run on a Saturday night and a half marathon the next morning. Not everyone running was there for the one-two punch, but I was hardly alone, and of the two separate races, significantly more people had signed up for the longer 13 mile run. And not all the half-long runners will take the double down dare later this year, but I am sure many will. Many of us!
Based on what I saw last fall, when I had last (and first!) run a halfway race, there were thousands who ran the thirteen miles with me but 1,200 more who signed up for the greater double distance that day, runners like me who had decidedly set their goal and built themselves up to the challenge. And this was just one race in one city, among many others throughout the world assembling thousands upon thousands of runners from early spring to late fall, some running with experience, many experiencing the race for the first time. This time, I will be one of them. And however sore and weary I may be on that day, I will be happy, thrilled to be part of the crowd.
I have come to this decision only today, after a relatively short three mile morning run. Time and circumstance may have me ponder and rethink the decision, but that is why I am writing this down right now. Journals have helped me get to and though previous goals, so here I am again, holding myself to my word. I think I just gave this new journal a name: Accountability. Less the accountancy of daily details, more a running account of my journey, noting what it takes to get to that capital G, the Goal, the biG run the Mega run, the Marathon.
Mmmm... I am still chewing on that word. Eight letters, 26.2 miles long. Nine times the distance I ran this morning. More graspable, only twice the stretch of last Sunday’s run, although that is still as long as I have ever run at one time. But let me keep grasping: my two day race was six miles closer and just seven miles from where I am setting my one day sights: two days, 19 miles will not be the same as a one morning marathon experience, but hold me to this: I will keep reaching...
So, when Persia was dust,
all cried “To Acropolis!”
Run Pheidippides, one race more!
The meed is thy due!
...He flung down his shield,
Ran like fire once more,
And the space ‘twixt the Fennel0field
And Athens was stubble again,
A field which a fire runs through.
— from Pheidippides,
by Robert Browning (1879)
Thursday, November 3
Moleskin 5.7: River Of Twelve
It was a fresh start, and at the end of my thirteenth year of life, the year stubbornly called “twelve,” it had all the makings of a clean slate. Our neighborhood was more than a suburb now: it was incorporated, a city unto itself; the Tribs and Sun Times I delivered were joined by local Heralds and Advocates, and my old job up and down apartment hallways was now a real route along several streets —I could use my bike now! And every weekday morning, after the papers were delivered, I went to Lincoln Junior High, a big kid school with tall ceilings and separate classrooms for each subject and teachers with personalities —Mr. Bolman, who posted daily trivia quizzes and doled out lemondrop prizes, and Mr. Sigg, who had a wall full of brain teaser puzzles to solve. There was an upstairs woodshop and a basement archery field...
Wednesday, November 2
Preface: A Race To Run
“Success Is Never Final And Failure Never Fatal. It’s The Courage To Continue That Counts.”
That was printed, without attribution, on the back of a T-shirt in the middle of a pack of runners. There were dozens of similar encouragements, on other T-shirts and hats, on signs along the side of the road, even in the cheers of bystanders along the way. “Best Parade Ever!” one sign said. And another: “Run, Walk, Crawl - Whatever it takes!” People I didn’t know were calling out my name, having only read it off of the tag on my chest: “Go, Jonathan! You can do it!” And in the end, even before I got there, I knew it wouldn’t matter what place I finished in or what time I posted. There would be an even louder crowd at the finish line, and they would be giving out medals to everyone who finished the race.
It was my third half marathon. I was gearing up for an even bigger race one day and I had to smile at that shirt I saw. Success is so relative, and never what we tend to sum it up to be. How disappointing it would be if it were a one time thing, a goal reached - and then what? For those who still have some fight in them there are no final rounds, and to those who look beyond the finish line it’s always on to the next!
And failure... I smiled again. Run, walk, crawl, I might even fall down, but it’s never fatal if I can pick myself up again. Even if I can’t someday, I will not let my spirit be defeated: the parameters may change, but there is still a race to run. And even when my spirit starts to lag, it is so good to know that I am not alone.
Indeed, it was not my own thought that had made me smile, but the shared spirit of another runner. Courage! That’s what it takes for every one of us! That’s what we can do! And if we are to continue, that, more than winning and losing, is the only thing that counts.
It does not really matter who said that saying first. I’ve found so many attributions, each with its own question mark: Was it Winston Churchill? Coach Ditka? Coach Wooden? Coach Paterno? A Congressional Record reporter? Whoever said it first, it was good to see, and good to hear. And yes, I finished the race, and yes, by the spirit within and with the encouragement of many around me and before me, I will keep running.
“Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal.”
—attributed to Chicago Bears Football Coach
Mike Ditka, 1990
“Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
—UCLA Basketball Coach John Wooden, 1972,
attributed (in error) to Winston Churchill
“Success is never final; failure is never fatal; the only thing that counts is courage.”
—Penn State Football Coach Joe Paterno, 1971,
attributed (in error) to Winston Churchill
“He held to the belief that success is never final ...and failure never fatal.”
—Congressional Record: A tribute to U.S.
Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, 1961
“Success is never final and Failure never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
—George F. Tilton, as cited in Forbes Magazine,
1948
“Men with the spirit of youth pioneered our America…men with vision and sturdy confidence. They found contentment in the thrill of action, knowing that success was never final and failure never fatal. It was courage that counted....”
—Anheuser Busch copywriters, 1938-39 ad campaign
for newspapers/Life Magazine
That was printed, without attribution, on the back of a T-shirt in the middle of a pack of runners. There were dozens of similar encouragements, on other T-shirts and hats, on signs along the side of the road, even in the cheers of bystanders along the way. “Best Parade Ever!” one sign said. And another: “Run, Walk, Crawl - Whatever it takes!” People I didn’t know were calling out my name, having only read it off of the tag on my chest: “Go, Jonathan! You can do it!” And in the end, even before I got there, I knew it wouldn’t matter what place I finished in or what time I posted. There would be an even louder crowd at the finish line, and they would be giving out medals to everyone who finished the race.
It was my third half marathon. I was gearing up for an even bigger race one day and I had to smile at that shirt I saw. Success is so relative, and never what we tend to sum it up to be. How disappointing it would be if it were a one time thing, a goal reached - and then what? For those who still have some fight in them there are no final rounds, and to those who look beyond the finish line it’s always on to the next!
And failure... I smiled again. Run, walk, crawl, I might even fall down, but it’s never fatal if I can pick myself up again. Even if I can’t someday, I will not let my spirit be defeated: the parameters may change, but there is still a race to run. And even when my spirit starts to lag, it is so good to know that I am not alone.
Indeed, it was not my own thought that had made me smile, but the shared spirit of another runner. Courage! That’s what it takes for every one of us! That’s what we can do! And if we are to continue, that, more than winning and losing, is the only thing that counts.
It does not really matter who said that saying first. I’ve found so many attributions, each with its own question mark: Was it Winston Churchill? Coach Ditka? Coach Wooden? Coach Paterno? A Congressional Record reporter? Whoever said it first, it was good to see, and good to hear. And yes, I finished the race, and yes, by the spirit within and with the encouragement of many around me and before me, I will keep running.
“Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal.”
—attributed to Chicago Bears Football Coach
Mike Ditka, 1990
“Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
—UCLA Basketball Coach John Wooden, 1972,
attributed (in error) to Winston Churchill
“Success is never final; failure is never fatal; the only thing that counts is courage.”
—Penn State Football Coach Joe Paterno, 1971,
attributed (in error) to Winston Churchill
“He held to the belief that success is never final ...and failure never fatal.”
—Congressional Record: A tribute to U.S.
Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, 1961
“Success is never final and Failure never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
—George F. Tilton, as cited in Forbes Magazine,
1948
“Men with the spirit of youth pioneered our America…men with vision and sturdy confidence. They found contentment in the thrill of action, knowing that success was never final and failure never fatal. It was courage that counted....”
—Anheuser Busch copywriters, 1938-39 ad campaign
for newspapers/Life Magazine
Tuesday, November 1
November
We speak of beginnings and ends,
of dawns and setting suns,
Yet we move from day to day,
from rhyme to rhyme
Remembering hours and hours
before our cognizance
And dreaming up new futures
all the time.
We speak of taking time.
November you’re the same
As an early dusk to close
an autumn day:
I want more warmth from you,
more flicker in your flame;
I miss the light of September
and the youth of May.
We speak of tomorrow’s return
to yesterdays; we dream
Of nothing less or more
than what we know,
Imagining that spring
is somewhere down the stream
Replenishing our current
blessings’ flow.
We speak from where we are
to where we want to be;
We want to be where we’ve
already been.
November you’re the source
of this endless reverie
And in your darkness
We reset the scene.
of dawns and setting suns,
Yet we move from day to day,
from rhyme to rhyme
Remembering hours and hours
before our cognizance
And dreaming up new futures
all the time.
We speak of taking time.
November you’re the same
As an early dusk to close
an autumn day:
I want more warmth from you,
more flicker in your flame;
I miss the light of September
and the youth of May.
We speak of tomorrow’s return
to yesterdays; we dream
Of nothing less or more
than what we know,
Imagining that spring
is somewhere down the stream
Replenishing our current
blessings’ flow.
We speak from where we are
to where we want to be;
We want to be where we’ve
already been.
November you’re the source
of this endless reverie
And in your darkness
We reset the scene.
Monday, October 31
Burrowing Owl at Montrose Harbor
You weren’t supposed to be here but the wind
blew hard a thousand miles east of all
your expectations. And the prairie turned
to corn, turned into stubble and the fall
turned to the ways of winter and the ground
came to a giant water edged in steel.
By chance you found a respite set within
an urban field of designated wild,
protected by a roll of a snowdrift fence
with a sign to read and reconcile
(for those who can or those who will)
a tranquil sanctuary for the mind,
a magic fifteen acres for the soul
and for the bird. Until the word went out
in typed staccato, texted with a shout.
It wasn’t supposed to go this way, but you
were not the ordinary beachfront owl
and we were crazy for a better view;
we’d never seen an eastern juvenile
cunicularia migrating through
Chicago; and we meant to wish you well.
Forgive us, then, for rudely rushing to
your resting place, for overlooking rules
and crossing lines, for passions crashing through
the wilderness and wandering off the trail,
(for those who will, and don’t we all?)
for being curious crowds, for flushing you
out of your final makeshift prairie hole,
and pardon most of all our great surprise
to find you at the dawn of your demise.
A Cooper’s hawk, as Cooper’s hawks will do,
descended from its perch above the din
and sank its brutal talons into you
before our eyes, turned yang to darkest yin
spectacularly as your feathers flew
into the autumn air and caught the wind
to fly no more.
And what were we to do?
Your wings had shown the wear of having been
a vagrant far from home, and you were too
exhausted to keep going past the dawn,
(and no one can keep going on)
too young to know exactly what to do
and too vulnerable with your prairie gone.
And here you found us with our feverish smiles,
so pleased to meet you at your final mile.
blew hard a thousand miles east of all
your expectations. And the prairie turned
to corn, turned into stubble and the fall
turned to the ways of winter and the ground
came to a giant water edged in steel.
By chance you found a respite set within
an urban field of designated wild,
protected by a roll of a snowdrift fence
with a sign to read and reconcile
(for those who can or those who will)
a tranquil sanctuary for the mind,
a magic fifteen acres for the soul
and for the bird. Until the word went out
in typed staccato, texted with a shout.
It wasn’t supposed to go this way, but you
were not the ordinary beachfront owl
and we were crazy for a better view;
we’d never seen an eastern juvenile
cunicularia migrating through
Chicago; and we meant to wish you well.
Forgive us, then, for rudely rushing to
your resting place, for overlooking rules
and crossing lines, for passions crashing through
the wilderness and wandering off the trail,
(for those who will, and don’t we all?)
for being curious crowds, for flushing you
out of your final makeshift prairie hole,
and pardon most of all our great surprise
to find you at the dawn of your demise.
A Cooper’s hawk, as Cooper’s hawks will do,
descended from its perch above the din
and sank its brutal talons into you
before our eyes, turned yang to darkest yin
spectacularly as your feathers flew
into the autumn air and caught the wind
to fly no more.
And what were we to do?
Your wings had shown the wear of having been
a vagrant far from home, and you were too
exhausted to keep going past the dawn,
(and no one can keep going on)
too young to know exactly what to do
and too vulnerable with your prairie gone.
And here you found us with our feverish smiles,
so pleased to meet you at your final mile.
Sunday, October 30
Far And Away
I look into your eyes
and in them find your heart
full of the sorrow
of far and away.
Far, the color of your eyes
and the story of a journey
stretching out to the horizon
with a word approaching fear
but incomplete:
far, the distance of uncertain,
like measuring a mountain
with the space and separation
between near and disappeared;
far, the feeling
between effort and defeat.
And then away,
another story of
a day after the journey
is over with an order
of divorce:
away, the echo of forever
in the opposite direction,
with the posture and position
of a disconnecting turn;
away, the feeling
of rejection and remorse.
And I can see
the distance and direction,
the echo and order
of fear and always
in your eyes,
telling me their stories,
filling my own heart
with the sorrow
of far and away.
and in them find your heart
full of the sorrow
of far and away.
Far, the color of your eyes
and the story of a journey
stretching out to the horizon
with a word approaching fear
but incomplete:
far, the distance of uncertain,
like measuring a mountain
with the space and separation
between near and disappeared;
far, the feeling
between effort and defeat.
And then away,
another story of
a day after the journey
is over with an order
of divorce:
away, the echo of forever
in the opposite direction,
with the posture and position
of a disconnecting turn;
away, the feeling
of rejection and remorse.
And I can see
the distance and direction,
the echo and order
of fear and always
in your eyes,
telling me their stories,
filling my own heart
with the sorrow
of far and away.
Saturday, October 29
Upon A Time
To my own Vivienne, wherever you are:
... not to be found in my obituary
Or in memories draped
by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken
by the lean solicitor
In my empty room
Upon a time, once there was
Who took the time —and what is time
But a thin line with hash marks
Conveying us then to now
And from now on, or
dashing predictions
a one time rotation,
Unrepeating, unending.
If history is a cycle of mistakes
time is one long forever,
now and then familiar
but the future never known;
if yesterday was headlines
and today is talking heads
tomorrow is today’s cheap talk,
Just when you thought it wasn’t
Just what you least expected.
... not to be found in my obituary
Or in memories draped
by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken
by the lean solicitor
In my empty room
Upon a time, once there was
Who took the time —and what is time
But a thin line with hash marks
Conveying us then to now
And from now on, or
dashing predictions
a one time rotation,
Unrepeating, unending.
If history is a cycle of mistakes
time is one long forever,
now and then familiar
but the future never known;
if yesterday was headlines
and today is talking heads
tomorrow is today’s cheap talk,
Just when you thought it wasn’t
Just what you least expected.
Friday, October 28
TWL, Lines 401-410: Thunder To Humanity
401 Da
402 Datta: what have we given?
403 My friend, blood shaking my heart
404 The awful daring of a moment's surrender
405 Which an age of prudence can never retract
406 By this, and this only, we have existed
407 Which is not to be found in our obituaries
408 Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
409 Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
410 In our empty rooms
402. THUNDER’S FIRST DISCIPLINE: Eliot: “'Datta, dayadhvam, damyata' (Give, sympathize, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka– Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen's Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.” See Paul Deussen’s German translation (1897), and see note 400 for an English translation.
The first discipline of datta, or “Give,” is what humans can hear in the syllable “Da.” Compare Eliot, Portrait of a Lady (1920):
“But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?”
403. PERSONAL POETRY: This line once read, “My friend. My friend, beating in my heart” (see Eliot, F&T). Eliot struggled to keep his poetry impersonal (see note 172.5), and even called the more personal Walt Whitman “pathetic” (see Eliot, American Literature, Athenaeum, 4/25/1919), yet he could not resist occasional turns to friendship and, in this poem and elsewhere, allusions to Whitman. See Eliot, Portrait of a Lady:
“Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
‘Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you should hold it in your hands’;
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
‘You let it flow from you, you let it flow...’”
and compare this to the opening lines of Whitman, Memories:
“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.”
408. THE BENEFICENT SPIDER: Eliot: “Cf. Webster, The White Devil, V, vi: ‘...they'll remarry / Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider / Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.’” This is Flamineo from John Webster’s White Devil (note 44) 5.6.182-190, leading up to his own dying words:
“O men,
That lie upon your death-beds, and are haunted
With howling wives! ne'er trust them; they'll re-marry
Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider
Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.
...Trust a woman? never, never; Brachiano
be my precedent. We lay our souls to pawn to the devil
for a little pleasure, and a woman makes the bill of sale.
That ever man should marry! ...”
410. A MOMENT’S SURRENDER: Lines 403-410 answer line 402: That which we have given, that which the thunder would have us give, is ever more than what will be stated in what we leave behind: not in our public obituaries or preserved epitaphs or private wills, beyond the bills of sale, but it is only by this “awful daring” (line 404) of ephemoral surrender that we have existed (line 406).
402 Datta: what have we given?
403 My friend, blood shaking my heart
404 The awful daring of a moment's surrender
405 Which an age of prudence can never retract
406 By this, and this only, we have existed
407 Which is not to be found in our obituaries
408 Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
409 Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
410 In our empty rooms
402. THUNDER’S FIRST DISCIPLINE: Eliot: “'Datta, dayadhvam, damyata' (Give, sympathize, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka– Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen's Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.” See Paul Deussen’s German translation (1897), and see note 400 for an English translation.
The first discipline of datta, or “Give,” is what humans can hear in the syllable “Da.” Compare Eliot, Portrait of a Lady (1920):
“But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?”
403. PERSONAL POETRY: This line once read, “My friend. My friend, beating in my heart” (see Eliot, F&T). Eliot struggled to keep his poetry impersonal (see note 172.5), and even called the more personal Walt Whitman “pathetic” (see Eliot, American Literature, Athenaeum, 4/25/1919), yet he could not resist occasional turns to friendship and, in this poem and elsewhere, allusions to Whitman. See Eliot, Portrait of a Lady:
“Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
‘Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you should hold it in your hands’;
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
‘You let it flow from you, you let it flow...’”
and compare this to the opening lines of Whitman, Memories:
“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.”
408. THE BENEFICENT SPIDER: Eliot: “Cf. Webster, The White Devil, V, vi: ‘...they'll remarry / Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider / Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.’” This is Flamineo from John Webster’s White Devil (note 44) 5.6.182-190, leading up to his own dying words:
“O men,
That lie upon your death-beds, and are haunted
With howling wives! ne'er trust them; they'll re-marry
Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider
Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.
...Trust a woman? never, never; Brachiano
be my precedent. We lay our souls to pawn to the devil
for a little pleasure, and a woman makes the bill of sale.
That ever man should marry! ...”
410. A MOMENT’S SURRENDER: Lines 403-410 answer line 402: That which we have given, that which the thunder would have us give, is ever more than what will be stated in what we leave behind: not in our public obituaries or preserved epitaphs or private wills, beyond the bills of sale, but it is only by this “awful daring” (line 404) of ephemoral surrender that we have existed (line 406).
Thursday, October 27
Moleskin 5.6: New Flow River
In the fall of ‘75, the fall of twelve, we moved again, this time to home number ten. It was in the same suburb and same school district as the stepdad home, but this home was a step up: a real house with two stories over the basement, in a neighborhood with curving streets and stone street signs. All the houses were older and less cookie-cuttered: ours had stucco siding with sloped corners and leaded windows. We were miles away from the Des Plaines River now, but we could hear O’Hare a little closer and sense the Kennedy Expressway to the south of us —different kinds of river flows. It seemed to be a “settle in” sort of place, with an easy walk to school, a new set of friends to meet and, once again, a paper route.
Wednesday, October 26
Someday (Even Now)
Someday
will be unafraid
of what we’ve dared to say, to hear
the Proposal beginning to form
of a song singing our fears into prayer.
Someday
will know the meaning of every kiss
and the truth in every holding moment,
the Path already turning
from if to when.
Someday, this day,
will see your caring as committing
and my trying as succeeding,
the Premise becoming the Promise
of who we are.
Someday, already, my love,
will live for today
and into tomorrow,
the Projection of our resolve,
the future unfolding, and
will be unafraid
of what we’ve dared to say, to hear
the Proposal beginning to form
of a song singing our fears into prayer.
Someday
will know the meaning of every kiss
and the truth in every holding moment,
the Path already turning
from if to when.
Someday, this day,
will see your caring as committing
and my trying as succeeding,
the Premise becoming the Promise
of who we are.
Someday, already, my love,
will live for today
and into tomorrow,
the Projection of our resolve,
the future unfolding, and
Someday, Cara, even now,
will share a better poem
with perfect words to say,
the Plans coming together
in synchronicity.
Someday, my love, is now,
and with this ring of Poetry
you are, if you will be,
my every day.
Tuesday, October 25
The Dance
I never knew how lucky a man could be
‘Til I met you and asked if you’d dance with me
And you agreed and said with a smile
You’d had your eye on me for a while.
You’ll never see a man as happy as me.
And then when you began to dance with me
I never knew how lovely the dance could be:
The way you moved, and move me still,
The way it feels you always will,
The way you hold me close and set me free.
I could keep dancing all night long with you.
I want to fall into the song with you.
And I never knew how perfect a song it was
Until the music started to carry us
Across the floor. They may never see
Two lovers more than you and me
In tune, two dancers happier than us.
I want to make you as happy as you make me,
As happy, as lucky and loved and moved and free.
‘Til I met you and asked if you’d dance with me
And you agreed and said with a smile
You’d had your eye on me for a while.
You’ll never see a man as happy as me.
And then when you began to dance with me
I never knew how lovely the dance could be:
The way you moved, and move me still,
The way it feels you always will,
The way you hold me close and set me free.
I could keep dancing all night long with you.
I want to fall into the song with you.
And I never knew how perfect a song it was
Until the music started to carry us
Across the floor. They may never see
Two lovers more than you and me
In tune, two dancers happier than us.
I want to make you as happy as you make me,
As happy, as lucky and loved and moved and free.
Monday, October 24
The Path
So far, Cara love, this path we’re on
Has proven to be everything and more
Than anything two travelers alone
Could ever dream. We’re seeing what before
Was far away: the moon, the stars, the sun,
Once distant beacons from another shore,
Wrap heaven’s light around us: Every dawn
Is new and each night finds us wanting more.
And as we walk as one, the sky begins
Expanding and the shadows disappear.
We start to hope our journey never ends,
And then, believing God has led us here,
We put our hands together and we pray
For perfect fires that never burn away.
Has proven to be everything and more
Than anything two travelers alone
Could ever dream. We’re seeing what before
Was far away: the moon, the stars, the sun,
Once distant beacons from another shore,
Wrap heaven’s light around us: Every dawn
Is new and each night finds us wanting more.
And as we walk as one, the sky begins
Expanding and the shadows disappear.
We start to hope our journey never ends,
And then, believing God has led us here,
We put our hands together and we pray
For perfect fires that never burn away.
Sunday, October 23
Telling The Story
There wouldn’t be a story
if there wasn’t used to be
Like wrinkles in a poem
stumbling on its own audacity
or textures on a canvas
proving authenticity
or waves upon the sea
resounding their testimony
or the truth of a dream
holding on to mystery.
if there wasn’t used to be
Like wrinkles in a poem
stumbling on its own audacity
or textures on a canvas
proving authenticity
or waves upon the sea
resounding their testimony
or the truth of a dream
holding on to mystery.
Saturday, October 22
Voices In My Head
from my journals, 1990
Another hotel dream: This time, I went into the hotel while Carrie stayed out in the car.
For some reason, it was in my head this evening that the way to get a hotel room was to find an empty one, claim it and then check in with the front desk. So I walked resolutely down the main hall that cut through the hotel front to back, not even considering any of the rooms being passed as possible vacancies until I got to the hotel’s far side, to a perimeter hallway, really a motel now —where I saw one door that seemed to mystically tell me that it would open to an empty room. I opened it and walked in.
There had been a person walking behind me down the hall —walking nonchalantly, just another patron I thought —until he walked into the same room behind me. He didn’t say anything, but he looked like he was forming the start of a protest on his lips. “Hey! What are you...?” or something like that. But I didn’t give him time for this and didn’t even turn to him and instead walked through the room to where there was another door into an adjacent room.
I opened that door and found a couple on the bed, making self-absorbed love. I closed the door, turned around and walked out of the outer room, lowering my eyes from the man who was, I now realized, this room’s proper occupant. I had made a mistake. And it all came back to me —remembering conventionality and realizing where I had strayed. I walked quickly back to the front desk to start all over.
Carrie was there in the lobby. There was no point in describing where I had been, but she had a wondering look on her face. I went up to her, hugged her affectionately and decided that the best thing to do would be to propose. So I stepped back a formal distance from her. I wanted to do everything just right; I wasn’t on my knees, but I still assumed the air of a man beseechingly proposing to an honorable woman several levels above him. Someone brought out a textbook —a hymnal —that had proper procedures on how to propose. It started out straightforwardly: Not ”Carrie, will you marry me,” but something as direct but with a few more flowery words —“How grateful would I live if you should be my wedded wife,” or something like that. And then there were a dozen other things to say, all very ceremoniously intended and laid out on the page. Each statement came in threes: I had to make a decision on which option to read out of each trio. The first one was often something in Latin; the second and third differed in their degree of religious or secular tone. The effect of all this was that my perfect proposal lost much of its glamor, and I largely stumbled along.
But I got through it. And she said yes.
And immediately we were in separate hotel rooms. I was in mine with six or seven friends / relatives, and Carrie was in hers. My room had two beds, and I laid down on the bed nearest to the wall. I reached over for the bedside phone and started dialing a number, but someone grabbed the phone, said that’s not right. I don’t know who it was, but he was correct: I had dialed my home number, and though I hadn’t said anything, he knew who I was trying to reach. “You’re both in the hotel, so you don’t have to dial so many numbers,” he explained. This, he said, is how he had known I hadn’t dialed right. And he took the phone and dialed for me and we reached Carrie’s room.
Her brother George answered. Somehow, briefly, I could see the whole room, and I was there, and it was the moment Carrie and I were breaking the news: We’re getting married! No reaction. There was Mr. C and Mrs. C and several others all leaning over something at the kitchen counter, going about their business.
But then I was on the phone again, apart from Carrie, and speaking to George. He was concerned —not unhappy, but concerned. “I don’t think you guys should rush it so much. I mean, the seventeenth of this month?” It was a date obviously arrived at in that room only; it was the first I had heard about it.
George was also concerned about our financial standing and our schooling. I assured him that we would be okay. I talked at length, strolling around with a portable phone. I was doing most, if not all, of the talking now. I talked and walked, and suddenly I found myself walking outside and down a nearby street. Eventually the reception faded. “George? George?” I didn’t have the phone’s antenna all the way out (—this was the early days of mobile phones—) but even after extending it I could only hear static....
I woke up and fell asleep several times after this, and I tried to finish the dream. It seems that I did get several episodes added, but they were all hazy, and are now completely forgotten, but each had the same positive tone on the same theme —we are getting married, and Carrie’s family wants it all to go smoothly, and somehow I have the feeling that it will.
Another hotel dream: This time, I went into the hotel while Carrie stayed out in the car.
For some reason, it was in my head this evening that the way to get a hotel room was to find an empty one, claim it and then check in with the front desk. So I walked resolutely down the main hall that cut through the hotel front to back, not even considering any of the rooms being passed as possible vacancies until I got to the hotel’s far side, to a perimeter hallway, really a motel now —where I saw one door that seemed to mystically tell me that it would open to an empty room. I opened it and walked in.
There had been a person walking behind me down the hall —walking nonchalantly, just another patron I thought —until he walked into the same room behind me. He didn’t say anything, but he looked like he was forming the start of a protest on his lips. “Hey! What are you...?” or something like that. But I didn’t give him time for this and didn’t even turn to him and instead walked through the room to where there was another door into an adjacent room.
I opened that door and found a couple on the bed, making self-absorbed love. I closed the door, turned around and walked out of the outer room, lowering my eyes from the man who was, I now realized, this room’s proper occupant. I had made a mistake. And it all came back to me —remembering conventionality and realizing where I had strayed. I walked quickly back to the front desk to start all over.
Carrie was there in the lobby. There was no point in describing where I had been, but she had a wondering look on her face. I went up to her, hugged her affectionately and decided that the best thing to do would be to propose. So I stepped back a formal distance from her. I wanted to do everything just right; I wasn’t on my knees, but I still assumed the air of a man beseechingly proposing to an honorable woman several levels above him. Someone brought out a textbook —a hymnal —that had proper procedures on how to propose. It started out straightforwardly: Not ”Carrie, will you marry me,” but something as direct but with a few more flowery words —“How grateful would I live if you should be my wedded wife,” or something like that. And then there were a dozen other things to say, all very ceremoniously intended and laid out on the page. Each statement came in threes: I had to make a decision on which option to read out of each trio. The first one was often something in Latin; the second and third differed in their degree of religious or secular tone. The effect of all this was that my perfect proposal lost much of its glamor, and I largely stumbled along.
But I got through it. And she said yes.
And immediately we were in separate hotel rooms. I was in mine with six or seven friends / relatives, and Carrie was in hers. My room had two beds, and I laid down on the bed nearest to the wall. I reached over for the bedside phone and started dialing a number, but someone grabbed the phone, said that’s not right. I don’t know who it was, but he was correct: I had dialed my home number, and though I hadn’t said anything, he knew who I was trying to reach. “You’re both in the hotel, so you don’t have to dial so many numbers,” he explained. This, he said, is how he had known I hadn’t dialed right. And he took the phone and dialed for me and we reached Carrie’s room.
Her brother George answered. Somehow, briefly, I could see the whole room, and I was there, and it was the moment Carrie and I were breaking the news: We’re getting married! No reaction. There was Mr. C and Mrs. C and several others all leaning over something at the kitchen counter, going about their business.
But then I was on the phone again, apart from Carrie, and speaking to George. He was concerned —not unhappy, but concerned. “I don’t think you guys should rush it so much. I mean, the seventeenth of this month?” It was a date obviously arrived at in that room only; it was the first I had heard about it.
George was also concerned about our financial standing and our schooling. I assured him that we would be okay. I talked at length, strolling around with a portable phone. I was doing most, if not all, of the talking now. I talked and walked, and suddenly I found myself walking outside and down a nearby street. Eventually the reception faded. “George? George?” I didn’t have the phone’s antenna all the way out (—this was the early days of mobile phones—) but even after extending it I could only hear static....
I woke up and fell asleep several times after this, and I tried to finish the dream. It seems that I did get several episodes added, but they were all hazy, and are now completely forgotten, but each had the same positive tone on the same theme —we are getting married, and Carrie’s family wants it all to go smoothly, and somehow I have the feeling that it will.
Friday, October 21
TWL, Lines 396-400: Then Spoke The Thunder
396 Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
397 Waited for rain, while the black clouds
398 Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
399 The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
400 Then spoke the thunder
396. GANGA is India’s River Ganges, said to sustain a tenth of the world’s population. In Indian legend, Ganga, a river goddess, flowed in the mountains of Paradise until King Bhagiratha prayed a thousand years to bring her down to earth. See Valmiki, Ramayana 1 (Bala Kanda, Book of Youth): 42-43 (ca. 400 BC).
398. HIMAVANT is a holy mountain in the Himalayas, literally the snowy mountain. Himavant is also the mountain personified, the Hindu God of Snow, father of the river goddess Ganga. See Valmiki, Ramayana (note 396) 1.42.23.
400. THEN SPOKE THE THUNDER: See Upanishads, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 5.2.2: The Voice of Thunder (tr. Robert Ernest Hume, 1921):
“The threefold offspring of Prajapati—gods (devas), men (manushyas), and devils (asuras) —dwelt with their father Prajapati as students of sacred knowledge (brahmacarya).
Having lived the life of a student of sacred knowledge, the gods said: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Restrain yourselves (damyata).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’
397 Waited for rain, while the black clouds
398 Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
399 The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
400 Then spoke the thunder
396. GANGA is India’s River Ganges, said to sustain a tenth of the world’s population. In Indian legend, Ganga, a river goddess, flowed in the mountains of Paradise until King Bhagiratha prayed a thousand years to bring her down to earth. See Valmiki, Ramayana 1 (Bala Kanda, Book of Youth): 42-43 (ca. 400 BC).
398. HIMAVANT is a holy mountain in the Himalayas, literally the snowy mountain. Himavant is also the mountain personified, the Hindu God of Snow, father of the river goddess Ganga. See Valmiki, Ramayana (note 396) 1.42.23.
400. THEN SPOKE THE THUNDER: See Upanishads, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 5.2.2: The Voice of Thunder (tr. Robert Ernest Hume, 1921):
“The threefold offspring of Prajapati—gods (devas), men (manushyas), and devils (asuras) —dwelt with their father Prajapati as students of sacred knowledge (brahmacarya).
Having lived the life of a student of sacred knowledge, the gods said: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Restrain yourselves (damyata).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’
So then the men said to him: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Give (datta).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’
So then the devils said to him: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Be compassionate (dayadhvam).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’
This same thing does the divine voice here, thunder, repeat: Da! Da! Da! that is, restrain yourselves, give, be compassionate. One should practise this same triad: self-restraint, giving, compassion.”
The divine voice of “Da da da” is considered further at notes 402, 412, 418, 419 and 434.
The voice of thunder is also considered more broadly, beyond the Upanishads, at note 321.5.
THE UPANISHADS are a key part of the Hindu books of knowledge (the Vedas) that teach about ultimate reality (Brahman) and spiritual self awareness (Atman). Upanishad means “sitting at the feet” and Brihadaranyaka, the name of this upanishad, means “great wilderness.” Thus, one could paraphrase the source of this scriptural passage as coming from the Waste Land lessons of Sitting on the Bank (see note 192).
Thursday, October 20
Moleskin 5.5: Sweet Maple River
I have to recognize what rivers I’ve been given, though. Chicago, I barely knew your green river, but I liked that nameless creek full of crayfish and that make-do hockey pond down the street, and as I got older I enjoyed discovering the sweet maple river of Des Plaines, groomed with urban forest preserves just a bike ride away. When we were young Dad would drive us to a nature preserve just off of Milwaukee Avenue, with caged raccoons and animal prints cast in clay and miles of trails with markers describing the different trees. Eventually I would find my own way to the Des Plaines riverbanks, and even now, and I am still here, too —that river gives me peace. I did not —do not —need to contemplate its continuum to be a part of it, and I am a part of it and one with every river I have ever known.
Wednesday, October 19
What Brings Us Here
from Walled Gardens
“Lose thyself...”
We do not come to the doors of God
nor stir the dust of the chapel road
assured that we should feel proud
of what the journey was
It wasn’t strength of will that brought
us here, or that our debts were paid
ahead of time and left behind:
this is no place for cause
And we may think ourselves well dressed
and breakfasted with our own houses
put in order, as if by this
we’re ready to be blessed,
But this is not a place where we are sought;
we are the seekers, here for what we’re not.
“Lose thyself...”
We do not come to the doors of God
nor stir the dust of the chapel road
assured that we should feel proud
of what the journey was
It wasn’t strength of will that brought
us here, or that our debts were paid
ahead of time and left behind:
this is no place for cause
And we may think ourselves well dressed
and breakfasted with our own houses
put in order, as if by this
we’re ready to be blessed,
But this is not a place where we are sought;
we are the seekers, here for what we’re not.
Tuesday, October 18
The Grand Design
from Walled Gardens
This is how you are to bless....
- Numbers 6:23 (NIV)
The grand design of the universe proceeds
regardless of apologies and creeds,
no matter what’s believed or not believed:
that God exists precedes how God’s perceived
and all the universe thus far perfected
is God’s reality on us reflected.
What good, then, if we separate the light
into a thousand rays of wrong and right
when there is truth in each ray we receive?
I may not always know what to believe,
but I believe that God’s expecting me
to keep reflecting everything I see
without distortion, judgment or rejection
and faithful to the source of my reflection.
God bless thee, wolf or Joseph, small or great,
and keep thee all the same by wrath or mercy
unbiased by thy aid or opposition,
no matter what thy rank or reputation;
God shine His face upon thee for thy favor
and turn His face toward thee for thy peace
regardless of thy service or rebellion,
uncolored by thy honor or thy shame.
By grace thy soul is given understanding
just as by God the sky is given lightning
and as the force that first did cause the heavens
is still creating every force within:
so bless thee, as the miller turns the millstone,
and keep thee, as the tender feeds the flame.
The grand design of the universe is carved
and I am but a sliver in the carving:
all I know is shaped by the designer
and all I am, a part of the design.
I am an ant with perpetual movement
around me, earth and heaven ever moving
like a mindless dragon: I am but a mote
within its mouth, and yet for all the motion
I am never swallowed as the dragon
sleeps and stirs. And even this great dragon
is given its own task upon the millwheel,
unmindful of the fires and misfortunes
of time, and I’m an atom on this millwheel,
holding to my place in the design.
This is how you are to bless....
- Numbers 6:23 (NIV)
The grand design of the universe proceeds
regardless of apologies and creeds,
no matter what’s believed or not believed:
that God exists precedes how God’s perceived
and all the universe thus far perfected
is God’s reality on us reflected.
What good, then, if we separate the light
into a thousand rays of wrong and right
when there is truth in each ray we receive?
I may not always know what to believe,
but I believe that God’s expecting me
to keep reflecting everything I see
without distortion, judgment or rejection
and faithful to the source of my reflection.
God bless thee, wolf or Joseph, small or great,
and keep thee all the same by wrath or mercy
unbiased by thy aid or opposition,
no matter what thy rank or reputation;
God shine His face upon thee for thy favor
and turn His face toward thee for thy peace
regardless of thy service or rebellion,
uncolored by thy honor or thy shame.
By grace thy soul is given understanding
just as by God the sky is given lightning
and as the force that first did cause the heavens
is still creating every force within:
so bless thee, as the miller turns the millstone,
and keep thee, as the tender feeds the flame.
The grand design of the universe is carved
and I am but a sliver in the carving:
all I know is shaped by the designer
and all I am, a part of the design.
I am an ant with perpetual movement
around me, earth and heaven ever moving
like a mindless dragon: I am but a mote
within its mouth, and yet for all the motion
I am never swallowed as the dragon
sleeps and stirs. And even this great dragon
is given its own task upon the millwheel,
unmindful of the fires and misfortunes
of time, and I’m an atom on this millwheel,
holding to my place in the design.
Monday, October 17
Creed and Confession
from Walled Gardens
I have been bound to imagery and form,
without regard to their source and eternity;
I have taken scripture at its word,
and found God’s essence in chapter and verse; and yet
I have bowed down to devils wearing the rings of kings.
“He sat upon the throne” was all I needed.
I have praised the images in my church,
never thinking of God as the artist;
I have followed the form of the worship service
never considering the contingencies.
I have come to believe that God will send
the devils on their way, but
I have never dared to move beyond
“He sat” to “He has no place.”
I have been bound to the image of a throne
and the form of one who wears a fitting crown;
I have let the scriptures tell me what is true,
as even “he that sat upon the throne revealed...”
I have proudly worn my Christianity
and celebrated God’s descendancy;
I have put this at the center of my creed,
believing that my God will come again, even as
I have known my God’s been with me all along,
every time, forever everywhere, even as
I have looked and still I look for a direction
to bow down to, traditions to cling to, even as
I have needed, always needed, something new,
something certain, something true.
I have been bound to imagery and form,
without regard to their source and eternity;
I have taken scripture at its word,
and found God’s essence in chapter and verse; and yet
I have bowed down to devils wearing the rings of kings.
“He sat upon the throne” was all I needed.
I have praised the images in my church,
never thinking of God as the artist;
I have followed the form of the worship service
never considering the contingencies.
I have come to believe that God will send
the devils on their way, but
I have never dared to move beyond
“He sat” to “He has no place.”
I have been bound to the image of a throne
and the form of one who wears a fitting crown;
I have let the scriptures tell me what is true,
as even “he that sat upon the throne revealed...”
I have proudly worn my Christianity
and celebrated God’s descendancy;
I have put this at the center of my creed,
believing that my God will come again, even as
I have known my God’s been with me all along,
every time, forever everywhere, even as
I have looked and still I look for a direction
to bow down to, traditions to cling to, even as
I have needed, always needed, something new,
something certain, something true.
Sunday, October 16
Zenaida, born of Zeus
Killdeers call with perpetual fear,
Nothing but fear, fear, fear, look here, look here!
Owls stand guard with the moods of moonlight,
Calling who, who, who casts their shadows at night?
Each bird sings with a different style,
And somehow the mourning dove lost its smile.
Nobody knows their trouble and strain:
Woe is woe, woe, woe.
Pain is pain, pain, pain.
Nuthatches ha-ha-ha nervous as clowns
Dancing on branches and making their rounds;
Gulls have a child-like exuberant noise,
A playground of high-pitched girls and boys;
A distant hawk telegraphs its fairest warning,
And then there’s the dove, quietly mourning.
Nothing but fear, fear, fear, look here, look here!
Owls stand guard with the moods of moonlight,
Calling who, who, who casts their shadows at night?
Each bird sings with a different style,
And somehow the mourning dove lost its smile.
Nobody knows their trouble and strain:
Woe is woe, woe, woe.
Pain is pain, pain, pain.
Nuthatches ha-ha-ha nervous as clowns
Dancing on branches and making their rounds;
Gulls have a child-like exuberant noise,
A playground of high-pitched girls and boys;
A distant hawk telegraphs its fairest warning,
And then there’s the dove, quietly mourning.
I cannot explain the mourning dove’s pain.
Can’t explain pain, pain.
Can’t explain pain, pain.
Crows are all arrogance, breaking the law,
Disturbing the peace with their caw, caw, caw;
Jays cop an attitude, ringing their name
From the tops of trees, all jay and no shame;
Cardinals share their clear cheer cheer
But the doves keep it personal, muted, austere
With hints of a story that nobody knows:
No one feels their pain.
No one knows their woes.
Sparrows are whistling Dixie, with calls
Of teakettles, peabodies, bounced rubber balls;
Thrushes are pipers that play heaven for us,
Ethereally luring us into the forest;
Most birds are easy to characterize,
But who is to say why the mourning dove cries?
I cannot explain the mourning dove’s pain.
Can’t explain pain, pain.
Can’t explain pain, pain.
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