Source: Indexed by Jessica Hagy – Aim for 10,000 Small steps a day.
Truth
August 22, 2016 by 17 Comments
Walking Cross-Town. With Al.
July 2, 2016 by 25 Comments
Jorie Graham: “The slow overture of rain, each drop breaking without breaking into the next, describes the unrelenting, syncopated mind.” (from “Mind,” Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts.)
6:30 am.
The train pulls into Grand Central, and clears. I sit. And wait.
The conductor walks up the aisle gathering tickets.
I cue up a Paul Simon playlist and walk.
The platform is empty. Stragglers amble toward the exits.
I nod to the armed guard, and slip through the open door onto 42nd, passing a conga line of yellow cabs. Not today gentlemen, not today. We’re walking Cross-Town.
Good morning America.
Dawn in Manhattan.
Sun Power lights up the skyscrapers, they lean in from the shadows to warm.
A wisp of a breeze cools, a welcome cut of the ever-present humidity, and a respite from the simmering trash and the marinating urine.
The electronic horse walks.
There’s a skip in the step this morning, loaded with a full night’s sleep, and boosted by Sun’s Solar Power. Beast and Beast. One up Top. One on the ground. Duo is Un-freak-ing-stoppable. [Read more…]
Yoga Girl and Goat
February 13, 2016 by 18 Comments
“Yoga sensation Rachel Brathen (aka Yoga Girl) has inspired others to grab a yoga mat and get going—including her baby goat Penny Lane! Last Christmas, Brathen received the adorable creature as a present from her husband. Together, they’re dedicated to running an animal rescue. “All she wants to do is sit on our laps and watch TV and climb things … and chill on the couch looking cool with her underbite,” writes Brathen, referring to Penny Lane.”
Don’t miss the full story and additional photographs here: My Modern Met
Running With Anguilla. On Christmas Day.
December 26, 2015 by 30 Comments
“What are the winter months?”
The cab driver chuckled. “You’ve not been to Anguilla Sir?” He paused and continued. “There are no winter months, Sir.”
Who you callin’ Sir? Aha. Old and stupid. 18° 15′ North – standing on the Equator. No seasons.
That was a week ago. It’s 6:10 am. 52° F. We’re trudging up a severe incline at Mianus River Park in Connecticut, back to reality. It’s Christmas Day. 391 acres. No humans, no superficial chit chat – ISTJ magic. Squirrels, Zeke and me. He’s at my heels, the clanking of his steel tags breaking the morning silence. He’s panting. I’m heaving.
It was a week ago. It was 82° F, gusty, the fronds on the palm trees slapping. Anguilla’s beach, fine white sand sifting through your toes, walking on cotton. The sea is warm, clear, the white sand carpets the ocean floor. I’m floating on a thick foam mattress, the tropical winds sashay the hammock. Wispy clouds, paintings, lazily pass overhead. If there was heaven….
That was a week ago. It’s a muddy track from the rains. Footing is sloppy. The Sun is working to burn through the clouds. Mist is rising from the earth. I’m over layered, overdressed and overheating during this December heat wave. And there’s Anguilla. Ever present. But, could you live there? [Read more…]
SMWI*: Everything is boring that does not happen in a chair
December 26, 2015 by 13 Comments
After the customary indulgence over the holidays, here’s Donald Hall, the 87 year old American writer and poet (and Poet Laureate), offering work-out inspiration. Think “Opposite Game” you played with your kids.
My trainer, Pamela Sunburn, works me out Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. She’s tiny and strong, four foot ten and a hundred pounds of muscle. If she had to, I’m sure she could carry my two hundred pounds slung over her shoulders. For half an hour each session she has me do cardio on the treadmill, squat with five-pound weights, lift tenners over my head and out from my sides, stretch muscles, stand up no hands with a beach ball between my knees, and do push-ups (as it were) standing against a wall. Exercise hurts, as well it might, since by choice and for my pleasure I didn’t do it for eighty years. (Once in my fifties I walked four miles.) […]
I sit on my ass all day, writing in longhand, which Kendel types up. Sometimes in a car I would pass Pancake Road, two miles away, and see a man walking his collie, the dog stepping out on his forepaws, two wheels harnessed to his backside. These days I no longer drive past Pancake Road or anywhere. I push wheels ahead of me instead of pulling them behind me like the dog. With my forepaws holding the handles of a four-wheeled roller, my buckling hindquarters slowly shove my carcass forward. I drool as I walk, and now and then I sniff a tree. […]
I went out for cross-country. As I did laps for endurance, I heard my eighty-year-old coach— the war had resurrected elderly faculty— mutter, “Truck horse.” My feelings were hurt. I worked on improving my style, but when I ran cross-country, agony rotated from ribs of one side to ribs of the other. I faked turning my ankle. […]
I have been told that as a baby I crawled up on a kitchen table and devoured a quarter pound of butter. I spewed it out quickly, and mouth-memory has endured in my distaste for yellow milkfat. Because it was so athletic to climb the table, perhaps my misadventure also led to my athletic malfitness. […]
Exercise is boring. Everything is boring that does not happen in a chair (reading and writing) or in bed.
~ Donald Hall, Physical Malfitness. Essays After Eighty
Notes:
- SMWI* = Saturday Morning Work-Out Inspiration
- Related Donald Hall posts: Which year was the best?
Running. With Cream and Cheese. (TMI)
December 19, 2015 by 42 Comments
The Fast was not part of any religious experience, ‘Tis the season, but the execution of a containment exercise. We order cocktails before dinner. Rachel was giddy in her counter: “the Dimwit thinks that skipping lunch is a Fast.” There’s no point in arguing with the closed-minded so I sit quietly sipping my tap water watching the mocking escalate, with Mother and Son now piling on. Who’s she calling a Dimwit? Who raised this thing?
Yet, I knew. I just knew, a bad outcome was coming. The late night dinner was preceded by a full day in the Sun and an empty stomach following the end of my Fast. My Fast.
I open with warm bread rolls (and who’s counting after three) – all carefully lathered with cheesy butter and baptized in virgin olive oil squeezed from some tree on an arid hill in Greece. This was followed with a Caesar salad, fresh crispy greens, a light-just-right Caesar dressing and razor thin strips of Parmesan cheese cultured from some cow grazing on a hillside in Southern Italy. The knife and fork then worked the entrée, a heaping portion of three-layered eggplant lasagna topped with cheese, broiled to a golden crisp.
This was chased down with three intermittent spoonfuls of Rachel’s garlic mashed potatoes, with the buttery succulence coating my tongue and lips. In my fourth attempt, the sharing was shut down: “Dad, ENOUGH!” – batting my spoon back and moving her dish beyond my reach. [Read more…]
SMWI*: Shake it!
December 5, 2015 by 11 Comments
Running. In Warsaw.
November 1, 2015 by 15 Comments
The hotel lobby. (~2006)
High cathedral ceilings. Dark wood grain walls. Turkish Rugs that run and run.
There’s a whiff of lemon in the air, the wood floors scrubbed by the overnight crew.
The Bellman, adorned with a red cap, offers a “God Morning” in broken English, and quickly drops his head back to his book.
A step back in time.
There’s no mistaking Warsaw (Poland, not Indiana) for the youth and flamboyance of Barcelona or the hushed old money wealth of Geneva or the modern efficiency and hum of Tokyo.
Warsaw is the Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. Long past his prime and wearing deep scars of bone jarring defeat. Tired, hurt and a heaviness that lingers.
It was a slow run 9 years ago.
An early Sunday morning in autumn.
A single 40-minute run cutting deep furrows which are turned over and over again. [Read more…]
SMWI*: Walk. Now.
October 31, 2015 by 15 Comments
In the back of my awareness,
I also know this:
The day will come when
I shall have to recall the luxuriant splendor of long, solitary walks,
rather than take them.
~ Katrina Kenison, Present. Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment
Notes:
- SMWI* = Saturday Morning Work-Out Inspiration.
- Photo by Maxine – My Perfect Void – My october | Russia, 10/30/2015.
