On relationships

I’m starting to feel like I’ve been through the deck so many times that I’d rather just throw all my cards down on the table face-up because I’m tired of trying to learn each set of rules.  Never really one for games outside of wordplay, my patience seems only to be decreasing with experience.

And too, it is unclear what in this context connotes winning because surely I have some chips remaining on the table.  Time is not numerical, measured in days, weeks, months, or years, but relational, comprised of versions of self in situ.

I am not looking for black and white, but rather perhaps more striated shades on the continuum of gray that seems to encompass everything.  Or maybe I am looking for black and white, but I have no doubt that confronted with such clarity I’d search out the hints of gray, the blur on the cusp of the lines.  By staying in constant motion, a relative state of flux, I’ve managed to both accelerate and stop simultaneously, neither there nor there and relentlessly certain in the uncertainty, the possible impermanence of here.  By seeking out stable transience, I have successfully avoided permanence thus far.

But already something has shifted, almost unconsciously fallen into step.  While no doubt we can each and both survive on our own footsureness, it sure is nice to share the miles.

Defining wordsongs

Jagged edges of lines repeated in mind, culled from text or ether; lettersounds repeating.  Bits of snippets of fragments of static until something breaks through the white noise; more often than not, nonsensical nonetheless.  All mouthfeel and backbeat and tapping til you find your cadence.

On wishes; 11:11:11

Stepping on cracks doesn’t break backs, but common sense dictates that glass houses don’t take well to thrown stones.  Enter at your own risk; knock on wood; there’s no turning back, but there are stars in the sky aplenty.

8.2 for 28

Birthdays used to make me cry; this year the weather bore the brunt of emotions while I stayed strangely calm.  Pathetic fallacy, or simply coincidence?  Tucking in toward the biting wind, I couldn’t help but laugh as my face began to freeze, a cold headache spreading forehead to temple, stiff fingertips curled into mitten tops.  A brief contemplation of the possibility of frostnip or worse on exposed flesh; a resounding response to ignore the temporary stinging of bare ankles, lest worse come afoot.  Onward toward the churning surf, cackling with the seagulls as they bob, weave, and otherwise remain motionless in the blustery gusts, faces facing forward in dips and lulls.

To move is to live; to run is to move; to live, I run.  Wild and gnashing, the weather pulled me out the door – just a few miles, just a little bit of living; sometimes it is necessary to do things just because, on the principle of the thing.  To run on a beautiful day is pleasant, perhaps bordering on sublime.  But to run on a day so full of malcontent as this, now maybe that may be seen as a true labor of love, or indignation, or unrelenting urge to manipulate the hands of time as they grope savagely at my ever-aging being.  Never did I truly consider the youthfulness of my countenance until the burgeoning smile lines and increasingly etched eye crinkles gave me pause two weeks ago.  Elasticity of features taken for granted, laurels ridden on like so many parade floats, until the years begin to show, folded in corners of mouths and eyes.

11.2.11

Inventory:

2 leaves caught; one right hand, one left

5.64 miles run

1 pair gloves not worn; 10 frozen fingers ensued

Between 8 and 17 cold water drops directly to lower lip, absorbed

Today I ran in the rain.

Generally speaking, the more I run, the more I want to run.  But the winter can sure be a dark frigid bitch.  Rhythms all off with the changes, lack of light.  Days feel longer and equally short.  Sunrise remains an accomplishment, yes, but more akin to a lesser goal, a revised and easier standard.  A softening and a settling.  The winter weight gain will begin soon enough, a slow thickening of limbs and accumulation of padding around the middle.  But that, too, is cyclical, and in time there will be another paring, another round of tightening.  As it is, I am hovering between comfort and concern; the paring season has taken its toll this year, leaving me to wonder whether I should worry that I rather enjoy what it has carved.  Weight, after all, is a heavy issue.

The rain froze my hands; I should have worn gloves.  But stubbornness nearly always wins out; turning around and acknowledging my poor judgment in leaving them behind would have been to admit defeat, and I do not give up so easily.  I like to feel tough, able, solid, if only to defy the surface fragility that others sometimes perceive.  I am (much?) stronger (and, perhaps, somewhat regrettably, (much?) older) than I look, thankyouverymuch.  I am not a breakable girl; I am not made of glass, but instead, I think, of grit and bone and nettles; things that crunch and pierce and sting should you try too hard to reduce them.  But yet I am solid, I am smooth, and full of marrow; when pricked, I too will bleed.

Running has given me a quiet, humming confidence; a trusting of sinew, a knowing of tissue that does not tear so easily or melt when wet.  A sense of self-reliance so important to this occasionally squeamish girl who shudders touching the clean packaged mousetraps on the shelves as the rodents have moved in just as the safety net has been let go from most corners.  In August 2010 I learned that I can handle a lot more than sometimes I think I can handle, but also that pushing the limits takes its toll.  Running I can handle.  Helping my grandfather off the floor and cleaning the cut on his head I can handle, shakily.  I avoided my greatest greatest fear that August; my mother lived it instead this past May.  Had it been me, I know I would have heard him fall; somehow, though, she slept.  That whole week the fear kept me awake, prickling my skin minute by minute through the long dark nights, longer than the nights in Madison, longer than the nights in Newton.  The longest darkest summer nights, spent rigid with alertness and terror of the known unknown.  It was no secret that his body was giving out, that each transfusion was more painful than the last, that each day ended slightly more spent.  There were no more dancing muscles; instead of a little dog, an oxygen tank rested faithfully by his side those last weeks, maybe month.  There was no more anger.  Just a fairly tacit acceptance of what was to come, soft quiet dirt avoiding loud rocks on echoing wood.