Jumping in....
To make myself finally get off my bum and out the door, I’ve signed up to run a 5K with a group at work. Since hurting my hip doing Capoeira last summer, I’ve had a hard time getting started with any exercise program. I decided resuming my rehab exercises and throwing myself in headfirst may be the only option. Time will certainly tell, although the initial attempts were good. My first run last week ended up with me limping for two days afterward. The second attempt on Saturday was much better, no limping at the end and only moderate soreness. Today went with the guys at work and no limping and little pain or stiffness. Perhaps the best way to treat an injury is easy exercise and not just rest. I’m determined to do hardly any speedwork for this and just working on my overall conditioning. Anyway, it’s nice being out again, spring in Devon is glorious right now with blossoms and green everywhere. Seeing all of this beauty can’t help but make one feel joyful…..
‘Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.’ -Julius Irving
Girl in the Mirror
The other day I was in a hairdressing salon while a companion was making an appointment. I said 'hello' to my hairdresser and then looked at the girl whose hair he was cutting. From behind I saw a cascade of dark wet hair falling over the back of the chair she sat in. I looked in the mirror she was facing to see her face and saw the kind of beauty that I seek in a woman but seldom see. She had a long, thin neck and an angular face of with a well-defined but delicate jaw and high cheekbones. She had pale skin and under a pair of stylish glasses were two orbs of deep brown. I must have been looking for a while because I found her looking at me in the mirror. I looked away and acted like I was waiting for my companion. As we left, I turned back and looked at her again. She immediately looked up and for some long moments we contemplated each other in the mirror. I couldn't believe I was being so bold. I held her gaze for another moment and then turned to go. Her beauty was so austere and elegant, I've been thinking of her many times since.
Studying Classics
From the pen of a master:
Battista Guarino, for example, makes clear that the proper study of the classics had to be active, not passive—had to take the form of a personal search for information, guidance, and stylistic models, carried out pen in hand:
Let them look for new maxims with specific applications. Writing glosses in books is also extremely profitable, the more so if they have some hope of publishing them someday, for we are more careful with such things when we are in pursuit of praise. Writing of this kind wonderfully sharpens the wit, polishes the tongue, produces fluency in writing.
One of mine....
Wednesday AM
Sitting with a gaze,
Counting chimneys and aerials
As the city spreads to the periphery
On a milky morning.
The doves lustily announce themselves
To passing cars
As they scurry by
To their purpose-filled destinations.
Me sitting here, waiting for the sun,
Like a lizard,
To warm my bones slowly:
The beams a gift for my dull ache.
Neruda II
Here's another poem from 'Las piedras del cielo' (Skystones) by Neruda:
IV
When everything was altitude,
Altitude,
Altitude,
There waited the cold emerald,
The gazing emerald:
It was an eye,
It looked,
And was the centre of the sky,
The centre of the void:
The emerald
Looked:
Fine, hard, immensely green,
As if it was an eye of the ocean,
An eye still in the water,
A drop of God, a victory
Of the cold, green tower.
sillitoe's 'loneliness....
the loneliness of the long distance runner by alan sillitoe
I just read this story over the weekend and it has made me rethink a lot of my views about running. Not that I have been doing a lot of running lately, but it got the thinking juices going. Because thats what the story is, a kid in a boys home running and thinking. Instead of describing it, I think Ill let the excerpt do the talking for me:
By the time Im half-way through my morning course, when after a frost-bitten dawn I can see a phlegmy bit of sunlight hanging from the bare twigs of beech and sycamore, and when Ive measured my half-way mark by the short-cut scrimmage down the steep bush-covered bank and into the sunken lane, when theres not a soul in sight and not a sound except the neighing of a piebald foal in a cottage stable I cant see, I get to thinking the deepest and daftest of all. The governor would have a fit if he could see me sliding down a bank because I could break my neck or ankle, but I cant do it because its the only risk I take and the only excitement I ever get, flying flat-out like one of them pterodactyls from the Lost World I once heard on the wireless, crazy like a cut-balled cockerel, scratching myself to bits and almost letting myself go but not quite. Its the most wonderful minute because theres not one thought or word or picture or anything in my head while Im going down. Im empty, as empty as I was before I was born, and I dont let myself go, I suppose because whatever it is thats farthest down inside me dont want me to die or hurt myself bad. And its daft to think deep, you know, because it gets you nowhere, though deep is what I am when Ive passed this half-way mark because the long-distance run of an early morning makes me think that every run like this is a life a little life, I know but a life as full of misery and happiness and things happening as you can ever get really around yourself and I remember that after a lot of these runs I thought that it didnt need much know-how to tell how a life was going to end once it had got well started.
Now what I like about this passage is that it is all about freedom of mind and body, what I think running is all about. Running isnt about adding up miles every week or personal bests or any of that other rubbish, its about being able to let yourself be empty, a vessel just going forward on its own steam allowing the mind to wander. Running shouldnt be done on some grid system like they prescribe for you in Runners World, it should be done for enjoyment and not the enjoyment you get from completing some goal. Let it be about pleasure and not another one of life's many tests.
neruda I
My translation of a poem from 'Las Piedras del Cielo' because I didn't like the translation I read:
II.
Quartz opens its eyes in the snow
And covers itself in thorns,
Sliding in the whiteness,
Its whiteness:
It makes mirrors,
Retracting in layers and facets:
It is the white thistle
Of the depths,
The son of the salt that climbs to the sky,
The orange blossom frozen
From silence,
The cannon of foam:
The transparency that was given me
By virtue of the arrogance of Earth.
Not saying that mine is fantastic, but less wordy than the original one. I'm thinking of doing more from this compelling book of poetry... Would love any comments on it if anyone is familiar with the original.....
