Run again

Last Saturday.  9 miles with Eric and Jordan.  Cold but right around freezing, so not so bad.  Just a bit of wind from the south.  Decent clip 'cept for when we walked a bit. Running sucks until you're done.  Blueberry pancakes.

What am I doing with my life?

Looking for a sign or some inspiration or something.   

Hello? 

Running again

I went for a run today with Jamie.  4 miles.  Cold, but not super cold.

The Wicked Witch is Dead!

That's right, friends, my computer melted.  Bodhi, my kitten, though typically the less troublesome of the two, backflipped onto a glass of ice water and spilled it onto, and into, my hated Dell.  Yay!  Today I bought a MacBook.  It's different.  I'm a little confused.  But it's good, I think.  

To be continued...

Why I Love Aikido

Here's one selfish reason: I was in a sour stressed-out mood for...awhile, and then I went to an Aikido class. And then I felt so happy!

I love Aikido.

:)

Jedi Mind Tricks

And the Art of Getting Out the Door to Run. The real story.

1) Bury deep the thoughts and feelings of how running sucks. (Once you start down the dark path...)

2) Plan to run early in the morning the night before. Upon waking, tend to the minimum of personal self care tasks, get dressed, and get out the door as soon as possible. Avoid any thought of what will happen when you cross the threshold. Make getting out the door AS SOON AS POSSIBLE your primary objective, this avoids giving the mind the opportunity to procrastinate.

3) Think about what you will eat when you're done running and how good that food will feel in your mouth, nourishing your cells.

4) Think about all the HOT bodies you'll see on the path. Think about being/becoming one of those HOT bodies someone else will see on the path. :)

5) Savor and enjoy the challenge and discipline of running long or running fast. Indulge the competitor inside of you, the seeker of adventure inside of you. Know that if you don't run this time when you said you would, it'll be that much more difficult to run next time. (This is karma!)

6) To follow up on #2, have a procedure in mind. As in:

Have running clothes readily available... Toilet. Brush teeth. Neti pot if necessary. Eat 2-4 dates. Grab gel shot. Drink water. Out the door.

7) Think about what cool place you're going to go run next. Barcelona? The Carribbean? The Great Wall? Think about other people being jealous and in awe of your exploits. (This is a desperate measure, I admit, but sometimes necessary.)

8) Remember that there will be moments where running is bliss. You have to run the sucky runs to get to the blissful ones. They do exist and they are the best of times.

9) Remember when you're done, you will be happier, calmer, and feel more at-one with the universe.

10) And the ultimate, fail-safe plan: make plans to meet a (reliable) running buddy you like to gossip with and have a ball! :)

Life After Harry Potter

I finished! Wow. Now I get to be me again.

I don't think I've ever been so obsessed about reading a book. I had not before experienced frustration with the speed of my eyes moving over words on a page. Faster, faster, read faster, I felt sometimes, I need to know what happens!

Anyhow, time to clean my apartment.

Happiness is

Things that have made me happy in the last 24 hours:

-Deciding not to do the marathon in October--that running sucks--and then going running, and loving the hell out of it! Yay for not feeling pressure to do something.

-Deciding to take Thursday off from work to go visit a peach orchard in Michigan to maybe find some writing inspiration maybe do some drawing.

-Finding Vegan English muffins at Trader Joe's and knowing that I'll try them with Cashew & Macadamia Nut Butter tomorrow morning. And I'll drink some TJ's grapefruit juice too!

-Licking my fingers after eating Trader Joe's Savory Rice Crackers--yummy salt!

-Going to Aikido class, then coming home to my kittens. I love looking forward to seeing the little monster heads at the end of my days.

-Putting on comfortable Thai yoga pants, listening to Kate Rusby, drinking a Sam Adams, and reading Harry Potter...which I'm about to do again...so far I love book 7!

:)

Harry Potter Obsession Continues

I finished book 6! (Half-blood Prince) SO GOOD!!! I think it took me two days? I'm thinking about waiting to start book 7 for a day or two, to give me some time to be in my life. I wonder if I'll be able to resist. But, really, I should fold my laundry at least before I crack book 7.

This is what my kittens have to say:

Bodhi: Sig! Hold still, I'm trying to clean you
Sig: Stop it, I'm trying to bit your neck
Bodhi: Noooo, Siiiiiig, stop it, I neeeed to liiiiiiiiick you baaaaack.
Sig: Rar-rar, I'm biting you

Cat casualities today:

-1 roll of toilet paper, slaughtered on the bathroom floor (Sig)
-a lamp had a near death experience (Sig)
-Bodhi jumped into her water dish and spilled water eeeeeverywhere

I'm late

for a very important date...

No, no, wrong book.

But I can't write now, I'm in the middle of reading Harry Potter. Life will commence when I have finished. Until then, nothing is happening.

If you need something to read, read Harry Potter.

chapter or song

People don't like to live on railroad tracks.

a new book:an autobiography of a massage therapist?

So my friend J had been telling me about a book he was reading about writing being a physical activity. We often think of it as being a mental thing, but really it is a physical thing. And like you should go out for your run even when you're not quite feeling like it, you should write when you're not quite feeling like it. Something about creating the physical habit of it. Perhaps the motor nerve memories of it. I'm not sure I understand, but... It's interesting. Because I have no Zen/Zone experience with writing. Whereas with TALKING. Goodness. I can talk for ever when I'm talking about something interesting to me. And I think sometimes if I could take my talking and edit it down, take out all my redundancies and misspeaks...I could really have something there worth listening too.

Maybe I need a recorder (oh, wait!! I've had that idea before and I do, in fact, have such a device) but then I may also need a semi-pretend audience... Hmm. My A.P. Bio teacher in high school always encouraged us to teach the Krebs cycle to our dogs. Maybe I'll begin discussing my meandering musings with my kittens.

Massage therapists have a unique perspective on people. And are uniquely credentialed because we, or at least I, spend a great deal of time in reflection. Contemplation. Or meditation. Meditation on particular people, their bodies, their minds, the interaction of the two. Teasing out, in my own mind, how do I best interact with this person to assist them in attaining their highest state of wellness. What do they need from me? Who do they need me to be?

Maybe I'll write more later.

Oh, but wait,

In a nutshell: an autobiography of a massage therapist. co-authored by two massage therapists. it's not about me on a soapbox about myself, but a dialog on or about the perspective of the human experience by (two) massage therapists. we have unique roles in peoples' lives. sometimes the first try against pain, sometimes a last resort. sometimes we see people in an intensely personal way, behind the mask they wear for their loved ones. we bridge gaps. between medical models and energy work. between the physical and the mental/spiritual/emotional. We work with tissue, but feel the heat of people, the energy of people. Sometimes people are open emotionally, sometimes they are draining to the therapist, sometimes there is a wall around someone. Intangible, yet distinctive. We speculate on the health or lack thereof of our culture at large as we witness individuals and answer peoples' questions about how they are living their lives. We are not experts in diet or spirituality or psychotherapy or medicine, yet all of these things influence the health of a person's body-mind and we assist people on their mind-body-spirit journeys of healing and self-awareness and self-development and so we understand or speculate on all these things, to varying degrees. We contemplate life and death and healing and bear witness to people's suffering and sometimes their release from suffering. What we have to offer, as potential authors, is an intimate and often ignored perspective on the body-mind organism. Our intended audience? Not other massage therapists. But average everyday people. Those people who say, oh, you're a massage therapist? That's so cool. But they don't know what it really means to be a massage therapist. There is an intrigue to people who touch people for a living, who relax people, ease their pain. Who can say, no the pain is not in your head, you have trigger points, stagnation in your tissue. That stress or anger or whatever strong emotion you experience, yes, I can feel that in your body. Yes, you are all one. We are all one.

Some specifics to possibly explore further:

-Unconditional positive regard. Three words that, upon reflection, changed my life forever. How massage school changes you. Evolves you.

-Why do people seek out massage? What need in our society/culture does massage therapy serve?

-What we learn from our clients? Those people who swear by massage and glow with health into their 60s and 70s and 80s. What else do they swear by? What are their secrets? I hear a lot of them.

-Why do I love my job? I'll answer because it's always so present to me. Because rare is the day I don't feel better after working than before. What I take from my clients is what I give them. Because I benefit from setting my ego-identity aside and focusing all my attention on the interaction between my body and theirs, where my intention is to create space for whatever healing that may occur for them, may occur.

(And Jenny is licking in between my toes...this is a little weird. Jenny is a dog.)

-And what is the mind-body-spirit relationship that we witness. How does one nurture oneself? Care for oneself? Why is this important?

---I used to think, when I was justifying the ethics of becoming a massage therapist, that if I can ease someone's pain or emotional suffering or burden, they will be more apt to be kinder to their children/spouse/anyone they interact with. And though this occurs one incident at a time, this may be the way to peace in the world. One little moment and incident at a time. The difference between eating consciously and liposuction.

---I think, perhaps, that as we become more aware of the true nature of our own existence, as we develop more our spiritual awareness, as we...explore our mind-body connection ...through being touched. When we are touched, we become more aware of ourselves. Both in the ego-sense, the boundary of, this is my skin, this is where I exist, and there the rest of the world exists. This is perhaps the first level or layer of awareness. But as we investigate and explore this further, we come to understand (perhaps?) that we aren't, in fact, defined by the border of our skin. The electromagnetic radiation of bodies, the almost annoying interplay between our subconscious minds and muscular tension, the realization that the food and air we consume influence the state of affairs of our minds and bodies, that sleep and exercise influence our mind-body health... All this may suggest that we aren't lumps of clay built by god. But that we grow from god, that we are god. That we are all one. That we all, collectively, are on a journey. You can put God in or take God out, if the word God doesn't work for you, the equation reads the same. (Btw, it's midnight madness at my house. The kittens are on a rampage.) I speculate that certain truths become evident, that some behaviors will become more natural, that one will naturally seek out a higher (not standard or quality..I see why people use the term) vibration. The ego always struggles to maintain its existence, its prevalence. Question: how does the ego exist in a kitten?

Okay, time to sleep.

Our First Night Together

I'm smitten. It's true. I can hardly see past the stars in my eyes. Last night I came home and let him out of the bathroom where I'd left him to keep him safe and out of trouble. He ran around the house a bit and then I put him on my bed. He jumped off and ran around and vocalized a lot. (Like he's doing right now--I'm looking forward to his sister coming home so they can play together.) After I turned off the lights though he climbed into bed with me and started to burrow against me. I think he was looking for my nipples! Yikes! He liked being under the covers and seemed to want to go down my shirt as well, but I wouldn't let him do that. And that's how we slept, all night long, him curled up, body to body against me. Yum. He's a cuddlebug. Just like me! And he does the snout nuzzling thing that Indy used to do though not yet to the extent that Indy would. I think it comes from the nursing instinct. He purrs a lot and audibly. He seems to like to be touched everywhere. (He let me clean his ears yesterday without any fuss!) And he likes to sit on my lap, but when I'm typing he's very curious about the keys and the screen...the last 5 sentences have taken awhile...to get right. Oh! And, he grooms himself a lot, which is good because he smells a bit like a horse. Maybe that's Anti-Cruelty Center smell?

He ate some kibble this morning for the first time. Yay! He's adjusting to being here. :)

Calling forth a paradigm shift -- Yasso Day #2

So today was another day of Yasso 800s. And after yesterday's dance class, my gastrocs were killing me. Imagine if you balled up two pieces of aluminum foil, but instead of putting them in the recycling bin, like normal people would, you stuffed them into my calves and called them muscles--that's how it felt. Try running with those legs.

Even so, today went like this:

1 mile warm up jog
stretch/massage gastrocs
#1 800m 3 min 34 sec (gastrocs didn't feel so bad. but my esophagus was burning)
#2 800m ???
#3 800m ???
#4 800m 3 min 47 sec
I started to run a 5th one, but my legs just said, "nope! I think not."
1 mile cool down jog

cough cough cough cough cough...for 20 minutes or so until I'd consumed one post-run beer and one post-run pizza slice. Finally, I stopped coughing. There was a lot of particulate matter in the air today (this is the nerd speak for I inhaled shit and it embedded itself into the back of my esophagus).

Anyhow, it was 4 miles of actual run/jogging with some recovery walk/jog laps in there. So 4- 3/4 miles total. And I was happy with these times--an improvement from last week. I think my goal next week will be to get 4 repeats under 3:40, and then I'll build from there.

I forgot to bring my watch, so I don't have times for #2 and #3, I could only beg for a timer for runs 1 and 4, but I know at least they weren't worse than the 4th one. And the 4th Yasso was equal to the first one of last week, which is interesting. Again, according to Bert (or Bart?) Yasso, I'd need to run 10 repeats of a 3min40sec 800m to be at a place where I could qualify for Boston. Which is 18 1/2 weeks away. I have time to make myself cough a lot a lot.

This is all Eric's idea, btw. I'm not naturally as ambitious as this........but ambition might be a contagious thing.

Here are what my stats would need to be to make this Boston thing a possibility:

1 mile: 6:54 (yikes! This blows my mind. I can't imagine running a sub-7 minute mile.)
5K: 22:57
10K: 47:52 (7:43 min/mile pace) (Last June I did at 10K in 52:55. A lot has happened since then, so maybe this is possible.)
10miles: 1:19:15
13.1 miles: 1:45:31
Marathon: 3:40:00 (8:23 min/mile pace)

And training paces:

9:26-10:39 Long run training pace (Sounds do able, especially now that it's not 15 degrees anymore.)
7:52 Tempo Run training pace
7:20 or 3:40/800m Yassos

Dude, so on Hal's Novice 2 or Intermediate 1 training programs, when he says 5 mile pace run, is he talking about at this 7:52 pace? Or the 8:23 marathon pace? Or, should I think in terms of 7:52 because I'll have to slow down to get water and blood oranges (if Chicago would only be so generous). I don't get it. Not that I'm going to know exactly anyhow, cause I'm not running on a track or treadmill, but what's the goal?

According to Yasso, Eric's right on target with his repeats, and Matt's on track to be in the sub-3:00 marathon club, should he choose to, which means he is waaaaaay too cool to hang out with us. :p Now we just have to do this shit 10 times (that's 5 miles worth PLUS warmup, recovery, and cooldown...and this is supposed to be less than 10% of our weekly training mileage??? Hmm).

Weird how this is such a different blog than I was writing a year and a bit ago. My interest in running has shifted. Welcome in: the paradigm shift.

Now, how do I race?

It's almost mar-ra-thon time! :)

Marathon training season is around the corner!!!!! Yay! I'm so excited.

Just the other day I said to a client, a multi-marathoning client, that a first marathon seems to elicit one of two responses in people: "Ugh. One and done. Checked that off the list. Thank God that's over" orrrrr.....it's the beginning of a whole new obsession. I think I may fall into the latter category.

I was just reading about post-marathon recovery. Think I'm getting ahead of myself? What's that? Ahead of myself.....naw. Could. not. possibly. be. Not me. :)

Anyhow, if I were to follow the marathon training program, it would start next week. Will I? Eh. I think I'll try to do the three mid-week runs. Or, at the very least, do two of them. I might keep and eye on a couple of training plans and just make sure I'm on top of my game. I think I'll do longer weekend runs than what the training plans call for (there is that Half Iron looming in the near-er future). I think I've been a little lax with the frequency of my training, if not the distance, which is fine. I've been thinking about other things, but I'm ready to nail it down again.

Yay!

WAD tonight totally kicked my ass. I love it. But my feet have forgotten how to move fast in the last 4 months of non-dancing and this is terribly frustrating. It's like my mind knows how they should move but they just aren't listening. I think I need to get to an Ashtanga class and remember my muladhara bandha, that should help.

And. and...

I hate cancer. Will it not leave my family alone. And I'd just been thinking about pain, the chronic pain that people have and how it is so spiritually challenging. And cancer. Chemotherapy. All that jazz. It's so trying.

And I'm thinking about writing a diet/self-love book. I wonder if I could fill up a whole book with the things I think about on the subject. And if anyone would want to publish such a book. And...the really frustrating thing is that I just know I'm going to see the book I want to write on the New Books bookself at Border's in a month. This often happens. (Wait a sec, I could just spew all my ideas here..........) Hmm.

Okay, so it's not a mosaic, but it's a start...And Yasso 800s, Take One!

This morning I woke up and knew I had to do something. I didn't feel like writing, so I did this instead. Yay! I think I spent thirty minutes or so on it.
This was my subject. The corner of my living room:


Please keep in mind I've never taken any drawing classes or anything. I'm a drawing baby! But it's fun!

And then Eric and Matt and I went for a run. Or, Eric and I ran and Matt timed me, cause Matt messed up his knees or legs again cause he doesn't get massages!!! (Or roll on the tennis ball.) So there are these things called Yasso 800s. Basically, this guy Bart Yasso figured out that you can predict (or train for) your goal marathon time by running 800m repeats in minutes:seconds what you want to run the marathon in in hours:minutes, and increasing that up to ten 800m repeats at the peak of your training (the week you're doing your final 20 mile run before you begin your taper). If I'm not being articulate enough to be understood and you're interested--check out the link. So today Eric and I ran some Yasso 800s.

I warmed up with 1 mile of jogging. Eric beat us to the track so he did 1 3/4 miles.

We did the first 800 together at 3 min 47 seconds. My comment, I never ever want to run a marathon at that pace. Eric, "You don't have to, this is the speed work. Remember, this isn't the marathon pace." Ah...yes. Thank Gawd. Whew! I had a scare there.

#1 800m: 3 min 47 sec
#2 800m: 3 min 52 sec
#3 800m: 3 min 57 sec
#4 800m: 4 min 2 sec
#5 800m: 4 min 17 sec (I think. And this one was brutal. Major side-stitchage.)

Eric's #2-5s were somewhere around 3 min 16-17 secs, I think. He's much more consistent than I am. And he did a #6 at 3 min 6 sec, if I remember right. 3 hour 10 min for him to qualify for Boston. It's within reach! Eric, "I'd have to change my eating habits." :)

I walked a couple laps with Matt when Eric did his #6 and then we did a cool down lap. Next time I think we should do more of a cool down jog, at least a mile. Really pump the lactic acid out.

I wonder if I could set (and have a reasonable chance of reaching it) the goal to get under 4 hours for the Chicago marathon. I wonder if I want to set such a goal. Chicago marathon is 5 months away. Hmm. I'll be thinking about it, it doesn't seem unreasonable. (Eric?) I'd probably have to change my eating habits too. :)

out of a funk

Today I drank my nettles. I woke up, contemplated my life, then contemplated life some more. Eric says I've been different since last Tuesday. Too much in my head, he tells me. But tonight's the last of it. I'm done. Too much thinking and whatever has put me into a funk and it's getting old and I'm boring myself. I had a headache today. All day. So annoying. I can count on one hand the number of headaches I've had in my life, not to include my migraine-like ear-ache kill-me-now pain that lasted for days and made me vomit--that was a different kind of pain. But traditional "tension headache" pain, well, I don't get that. But my neck is really tight and this is boring to write and I'm tired.........................

Yea, so I've decided a few things. One, I want a new hobby, a new passion. It's spring (hopefully) and I want to fall in love with something. So I'm on the make for a new hobby. I probably want it to be physical, because I like physical things. But not tooooooo demanding in the way of endurance, because I only have so much time and energy and chi for those sorts of activities. Kayaking? Aikido? Both sound appealing, I'm considering my options.

Two, I want my kittens. Where are they? I hope I find them soon.

Three...well, I had a third thing, but I either don't want to talk about it or it's just late and I want to go to bed now. I forget which. But I'll say this: My friendships, to include my family members who are also my friends, are the most valuable thing in my life. I feel incredibly grateful and lucky to have people in my life who will speak the truth to me, who sometimes love me more than I love myself, who hold me accountable to my own best interests, and who set the bar in the way of loyalty. While waiting for the bus tonight I realized I'm much better off having spent my 20s making really good friends than getting hitched to someone that I was no longer even friends with, as seems to be the case in too many marriages.

(Okay, dude, I'll be optimisticpositive again. You can be pessimisticnegative...well, after your surgery. Good vibes will help you heal faster.)

An Unexpected Day

I have realized in the last week that I--sometimes perversely--enjoy days that do not happen as I expect. It started on Tuesday when a good friend and I went to look for my kittens at a local stray cat no-kill shelter. Playing and hanging out with various cats in the shelter, not finding my cats, but enjoying the ones I was meeting, I forgot to remember time, and I missed my dance class. So we kept playing with the kitties. And I felt especially drawn to the FIV+ cats, tough little stocky street-wise tom cats that most of them are. Scarred and roughed up but now surprisingly affectionate and unassuming and unpretentious, these guys resonated with a part of me that made me curious. And so we went for tacos and we got to talking.

Two things. Why am I drawn to hard luck cases? And what's with my attraction to people in the 19-22-ish age range? Granted, I have my scruffy-self-made-man-with-glasses attraction thing too. And my low-center-of-gravity-muscular-Asian thing. And anyone who's good at something or who talks about the world in a certain way will pique my interest. Mention something about the beauty of bread making and working with yeast and building gluten bonds and my palms start to sweat. But, maybe it was that I'm in the middle of listening to Lolita on CD that I have been conscious of the perversion of being into younger people and aware of my own track record. Granted, this age range is legal...but that doesn't mean it is not also an indicator of something I might wish to be conscious of that has been haunting me unawares.

Sara asked, what was going on in my life when I was nineteen to twenty-two. Heh. Those were the Dark Ages of my life. The pit of my despair. Years of many dark nights of the soul. The Black Hole of my existence. Could it be? Could it be that the whole thing of my dad dying did not have the greatest gravitational pull? Could it be that it was this time of my life? Could it be in the memories of this time? What is the story I tell myself, how do I remember it? It is not a time I like to think about, talk about, admit to having participated in. I carry the scar that, to me, marks the end of this time, an accidental tattoo that reminds me I am worth it, but what came before? What is the memory that lurks behind my conscious awareness? What power does this hold on me. What is unresolved. And what do I do about it. Constriction in my sternum, my ribs don't want to lift, can I still breathe?

And if I look into me, into my history with my now 30 year old eyes, what do I do with what I see?

It was hard at first, my memory kept dodging my conscious mind. I jotted some things down to help my mind focus on what it was supposed to be thinking about. What had happened in that time? What is it I don't like to think about? I've spent so much time not remembering, I've probably erased some things completely from my neural pathways. But what really happened?

I pulled out old journals from that time and started reading. Investigating my old self through the processes I'd laid out on paper, I was aware it was me, but also aware of the time that has passed, the reincarnations I've had. And I read the journal before the Dark Ages began, and a strange thought materialized. I was the meanest person in my life. If I had a conversation with myself about myself and how I treated myself, I would tell myself to break up me. Dump her. She is toxic. Poison. Bad for you. Mean. Really mean. Hard on myself? People have been saying this lately, now I'm starting to get it. I think I thought it had started in the Dark Ages, but it didn't. It maybe has always been there, in me. I don't think I treat other people with this meanness, I don't judge others the way I judge myself. I'm not harsh or condescending with other people the way I am to myself. I thought this way of being, this harsh controlling strict voice in my head had started in the Dark Ages, was a carry-over of something that had once served a purpose, to, in a sense, pull myself out of that pit. I thought the rigidity with which I spoke to myself was good. I thought control and discipline were attributes. I thought...I thought...I remembered things differently. I was mean and rigid and controlling and demanding before the Black Hole pulled me in. Maybe it was, in fact, the unforgiving nature of that voice that pushed me into that Hole.

Of course, I can also be very loving and good and encouraging of myself. I'm not all meanness. No, that would be silly. No Dom is always mean, there has to be some good to keep the relationship going. But when I was mean, I could be really mean.

And so I woke up Thursday morning thinking about this. And I wondered if today was going to be the day that I died. This is not uncommon. I probably wonder a handful of mornings every month if that'll be the day that I die. Someday it'll be that day, I'd like to be little prepared for it. They say this isn't uncommon when someone significant in your life has died and your own mortality becomes especially present to you, but I don't remember a time not having these thoughts. And Thursday morning, I also had the thought that I was going to be in a bicycle accident--I was planning on biking to work. Hmm. Maybe I should drive. And then I had the thought that I was going to be in a car accident. Hmm. Better a car accident than bicycle accident, I figured. But, like I said, these thoughts are not terribly uncommon. So I checked the weather. 49 degrees. Cloudy. Eh. That's pretty chilly. Premonitions of bicycle accidents combined with chilly bicycle temps was enough to get me in my car.

I had to wait, behind a long line of cars near my house, through 3 light changes before crossing the intersection. Then the crosswalks were being repainted and the road was half-covered with orange cones. Then there was the usual construction on Ridge...but there was a cement truck blocking our path. So I turned off onto a side street to go around it...and waited for drivers to decide they could turn right afterall...but not before seeing the traffic start moving again on Ridge. Oh, I should have stayed there! And then two times the light changed before being able to get back onto Ridge. I hate driving. I hate commuting. I hate driving long distances like to my mom's house or Iowa. I'll enjoy driving to Utah when I eventually will again. Or if I go camping this summer, I'll enjoy that. But I hate running errands in a car, the tedium of it bores and upsets me. And driving to work has been especially bad lately with all the construction everywhere in the city because of all the potholes from this last winter's dramatic temperature shifts and whatever else they're doing.

And so by the time I got up to Wilmette I was running late and irritated and distracted by the junk my head. And then I was aware that I was moving forward but the car in front of me was not. Slam on the brakes. Steer to the right. I'm gonna hit him. Go LIMP!

Okay, so this is the story. In massage school, one of my teachers told a story of when 4 of her friends were in a car accident. It was something crazy like they were out west and lost control of the vehicle and they were veering off to hit a wall of rock. At a moment before impact, someone in the car shouted, "Go limp!" And everyone did. And no one had any injuries. Because if you're relaxed, your body is basically just a sac of sacs of water or juice. If your tissue isn't tense and hard, you move with fluidity. Like a water balloon will bounce, unless it is too taught and hard, then it'll break. This is why people who fall asleep at the wheel or who are intoxicated have fewer injuries than many accident victims that are awake and coherent. In the last few weeks, I've had the increasing sense that I was going to be in an accident and I've been practicing "going limp." I've been having the thought that I was going to be rear-ended, I didn't think that I was going to be rear-ending anyone.

But I did. And he bumped into the vehicle in front of him.

But here's the interesting thing. In the moment I realized I was going to hit him and there was nothing I could do about it, in the moment I was thinking go limp and watching my arms float away from me in the air of their own accord at the moment of impact, I forgave myself. And then I sat. And watched the rearview mirror to see if the guy behind me would hit me. He didn't. I think he served to the right, or maybe he stopped in time.

And the world reorganized around me.

The guy whose vehicle I hit got out, asked if I was okay. I tried to open the door; it didn't open. I rolled down the window. Yes, I'm okay. Are you? Yes. He went up to check on the other driver. He made a phone call. I sat, feeling shaken up, not quite ready to stand or walk or talk. I sat. I breathed. I had a thought about making a phone call, but didn't know who I would call. As more thoughts came to me, I found my driver's license and insurance card and climbed out my window as if I were climbing out of a race car. That was fun. I checked on the woman in the front car, she was okay. I called work. I wasn't going to make it in, I'd call to update her on the situation. Should we call 911 or 311? I don't know, I said, I feel pretty shaken up. I called my insurance company. The police officer arrived. We made small talk on the side of the street for an hour or so while the police office did the paperwork in his car. I felt calm. At peace. At rest. I accepted absolutely whatever consequences there were. I didn't offer any resistance to any criticism. And yet, there wasn't any. I apologized to them. These things happen seemed be the nonchalant reception. Report written, citation issued, the other driver's left the scene. I thanked the police officer for being so nice, "Well, it's not like you woke up this morning and decided to go on a rampage. That's why we call them accidents."

No, I didn't.

But so far, this accident seems to be the most therapeutic incident of my life, this day that didn't go according to plan at all. Writing this now, Saturday night, I've yet to feel a single thought impulse of the accusing, berating, abusive, negative self-talk that too frequently has echoed around my head. I forgave myself in a moment. Without forethought, it happened spontaneously. Which is how anything actually happens. In a moment.

Forgiveness. I'm not sure I understand it. What is that? What is forgiveness. Is that a surrender? A giving up? A giving up of control? Is it a loving? Is it an acceptance? Something unconditional? It is something you can feel viscerally, is it not? An opening in your heart, a light shining from your space behind your sternum? An ease of inhalation. A calming exhalation? A sense of peace and almost happy death? What is forgiveness?

Other things became clearer. I thought I had struggled all those years. But what is struggle. I thought I had failed. But what if I didn't? What if all those years, those years formerly known as the Black Hole, the Dark Ages, what if they were actually me being a huge success? I have only seen myself live those years, those circumstances one time, that time that I did live them. Maybe I actually did a really awesome job of living that life, that lifetime? I survived. I didn't even get addicted to drugs or kill myself or anyone else. I graduated from school. I understand...I understand a hell of a lot more about life and living and empathy and people struggling with minds that don't behave the way they want them to...then I probably would have if those years had not happened as they did. And what if these years were actually my greatest success? What if those obstacles were a biggest challenge? What if what I had thought of as failings weren't failings at all but obstacles to overcome and learn from?

Somehow, in a way I would not have thought possible, I forgave myself both for an accident and a time in my life that used to be my greatest burden, both of which may not actually require a forgiveness, and yet it is there. I've reframed this 19-22 time of my life. It's actually my time of greatest challenge and therefore greatest success, like the best massages are the ones you need the most (or that's what I say).

Another thing. I've been realizing how powerful language is. To be told I'm "at fault" versus being told, "it's your fault" is a very very different thing. And this thinking about language, I realize I have been overusing "need" and underusing "want." In life, in a life, there is only really one thing to do. Or, we can say two. To be born, to come into existence. And to die, and detach from the ego. Everything else is something you want. It may feel like a need, because you need to do it to get something else, but if you honor it as a want, the power rests with you. It comes forth internally, the pressure you feel is to achieve or acquire what you seek. It is not what someone else, some external force is putting you.

You may feel that you need to clean your house. But you don't. You want to live in clean house. Or you may not want to appear a slob to your friends. Or whatever your reason actually is, but it's not something you need at all. Now, to achieve the clean house, maybe should clean the house or get someone else to clean the house. But to say you need to clean your house puts you into the position of being a victim. "I'm sorry, I can't go out tonight, I need to clean my house." No, you don't. You're choosing to clean your house because you want that or wanting that result more than you want to go out. It's more powerful to recognize this.

_____________________________________________

Oh, yea, and Eric and I ran 10 miles today. I hadn't even decided I was going to run today when I woke up. But Eric came over and we went for a run. And when we ran 3 and I thought we'd be turning around...Eric steered us further down the path. How far do you want to run? I don't know. So we kept running. Just passed the totem pole is 4 miles (so would be 8). Okay. Hey, they opened up the bike path, wanna check it out. Eric thought it looked cheap and that it wouldn't last more than a few years. Big improvement from before though, for at least as long as it lasts. All the crabapple blossoms were pretty. Looked pretty. Smelled pretty. Almost at Belmont Ave. Should we turn around. Naw, we're passed the 4.5 point. Let's keep going to make it 5 and an even 10. This still tickles me. I love that I can, without any prior planning, other than making sure I had some toast beforehand, run 10 miles.

And looking at my thoughts. Reconsidering, again, this Half Ironman thing. I don't want to do it if it is more of me beating up on me. Me stifling me. Me punishing myself not for being bigger, better, more. For not being more perfect in some undefined and unimportant way.

Eric and I talked about this over cornmeal pancakes and tempeh. I thought about how I felt on the run. The thing is, I enjoy it. I love it. Sometimes running makes me cry. I like running long because...it's purifying. Short runs are for maintenance, because your body can't always take a long run, and because there are other things in life other than running. But anywhere up around 10 miles now feels really good. During the run, well, if I thought about it, in a way I'd prefer to be laying down at any given moment. :) But there is also a sense of...appreciating the momentum of moving forward. Stopping becomes difficult because I become used to the sensation of moving forward, sort of like how it feels when you're walking on a moving pedway and you reach the end and you sort of lurch forward if you don't pause in your walking for a moment before departing.

So, maybe we'll do the Half Iron. I'll do what I like to do, which happens to be biking and running and swimming, and then when it comes time when we have to decide yes or no, we'll/I'll decide. If not a Half Iron, we'll probably do another International. I like the International distance Tri.

Okay, it's 3 am now on Sunday. Time for bed. :)

Happy Mother's Day!

WAD* = ass kicking

Whew! First time back to a dance class in...oh, 4 months! And I'm feeling muscles I'd forgotten existed! This shit is good. It's two days later and it still hurts to move in some directions... Plus, it makes me happy, and then it makes me sleepy. :)

I love it.


*WAD = West African dancing

10 Miles?! No problem.

Time of departure: About 6:40pm-ish
Return: 8:30-ish

Phase of the moon: Waning Gibbous, 93% Full

Temperature: 73F
Humidity: 44%
Partly cloudy. But I could see the sun setting in the west, orange ball that it was.

Route: Down the lakefront, past Belmont, to the 5 mile point I charted on gmap
Approx Distance: 10 miles!!!
Running buddy: Self. My 2007 xmas mix CD.
Clothing: Brooks pants (pants I bought for Europe), Hind t-shirt. It's funny. When I last was really writing about running, it was always a struggle to figure out what to wear. Rarely now do I have the same problem. I feel like I always just know. And if I'm wrong, I'm okay with being cold or hot. I used to be so afraid of it.

What did I eat pre-run? Some Tings left over from Saturday night. Nutritious, I know, but I was just thinking I needed some carbs. :)
How did I feel? Awesome. Did I say awesome? Yea, I meant awesome. :)
What do I like about running? Cause it's kickass. Naw. I don't know. Cause all day I've just felt kind of under-expressed, as a human being, as an organism. Running makes me feel real.
________________________________

Okay, I'm just glad to have written gotten this far in the blog. I'm not going to write a whole thing, I don't think, because I'm exhausted and tomorrow is another day and I need to have sleep because with any luck, I'll get to live tomorrow too and... Yea, okay, so obviously, I'm tired.

I don't know where exactly I am with training. I know Eric and I are talking about doing the Half Ironman on August 2nd. This is 15 week away. Which isn't a ton of time. I want to run faster. I should start swimming. I should have started already, but it's hard to get into the pool that first time. This weekend I'd like to go for a loooong bike ride, see where I'm at. How crazy is 56 miles + 13 miles of running?

So, this morning, I'm not even sure I had committed to running this evening. Maybe I was thinking about running 6. I texted the usual buddies to see if one of them wanted to run...one is broken, one is sore. Hmpf. Okay, so I'm on my own then. By the end of the workday I was thinking I wanted to run 8. Why? What is this feeling you may wonder? I wonder. And I'm not sure I know. There's a sense that I've been craving the wrong foods (too much for foods that take up space versus foods that are high in nutrition--read: green leafy vegetables). There's a sense that my mind has been too cluttered, that I've been thinking the wrong sort of thoughts. There's an awareness I have now that the distance will help reorient these things. I've been missing the feeling of soreness, tiredness, achiness in my legs. A feeling that like, "Yes, I did something. I pushed myself beyond what is totally comfortable and, yes, I did it. I can do it. I can accomplish what I seek to accomplish."

I haven't, in a long time, wanted a run as much as I wanted this one. That's the thing, when you're training for something, for a marathon say, you are on someone else's program. There's an order to things that you're trying to follow. There is always a run that you should do. Or, when you're running with a buddy, you share the decision making about the nature of the run. And maybe you're just running because you decided beforehand that you should run, and you're holding yourself accountable. But when you're off a program and buddy-less, you are free! Free to realize, in the absence of structure, I WANT THIS. I do. I want this.

And today, oh, boy, I wanted to run. I didn't have to trick myself out the door. When I decided it was time to go, I just happily went outside and started running. Physically, I felt great. I started at a decent clip. At about the 2 mile point, I realized that 8 wouldn't be enough to satisfy. I would run 10. Yes. I would run 10 miles. A nice round number. I think I craved a feeling of accomplishment. I wanted my body to feel tired. I wanted my mind to the feel the master of its domain. I wanted control of myself. I wanted to feel cool. :) Because I do feel cool to be able to decide, on a whim, I'm going to run 10 miles. And then go do that. Wow. I think, all my life, I wanted to get to the place that I am today.

Wow. I just typed that, but reading it again, I realize it is true. This is where I wanted to be. Have wanted to be. This has been my subconscious goal, I think, to attain this level of fitness, though I'm not sure I realized it until now.

I wasn't just jogging today either, I was running. I never was at my slowest pace--like at the marathon. I was always pushing the tempo a bit, sometimes more, sometimes less, but never totally relaxed. This was good. I didn't walk at all, and only stopped once for 3 sips of water at the 7 mile point. And I almost didn't do that. Part of me wanted to just tough out the whole thing, but I figured I'd allow myself one water break. I don't need to start being a masochistic fool about training. (I watched G.I. Jane last night. I love that movie. I don't think it's a great movie, but I always enjoy watching it. And it always makes me want to run in the rain. And it makes me perversely miss the military life.)

Okay. I had observed all sorts of things about nature, but I'm tired now, so they will go unrecorded. Basically, it was a nice warm spring evening. :) Ya'll should've been out there.

Running in Circles - Track Run #2

I miss my running blogs. I miss having all these stats collected and paying particular attention to the nuisances of my runs because I know I'll be writing about them later. I wish I had two years worth of of thoughts and stats to play with and chart. But I don't. Because it's a pain in the ass to collect them all. And it takes time to write. :) Anyhow, it's a new season in my mind. A new beginning. We'll see.

Time: 10:15am-ish. Maybe we ran for 45 minutes?
Sunrise: 6:04am
Sunset: 7:37pm
Phase of the moon: Full moon, 99% Full

Temperature: 58F
Descriptor: Overcast, but then the sun came out and I wanted my sun glasses.
Dew Point: 52F
Humidity: 91%
Lake Temp: 48-50F. Yikes. We're going to start swimming in a little over a month! It better warm up!

Route: Around the track at Loyola. It's a 300m track. We did quite a few 300m repeats and 122m repeats and a couple 600m. We were running fast (by our own standards).
Approx Distance: Not sure.
Running buddies: Matt, Eric, Pete
Clothing: Pants I bought for Europe, blue Patagonia shirt. Once the sun came out, I wanted to take my shirt off, but didn't. The boys were wearing shorts and t-shirt. The temperature really dropped once we left ANF. Poor Matt. He looked so cold.

People tally: There were some kids running around the track. A mom and college daughter walking on the inside track, an older couple, and one man walking.

What did I eat pre-run? Multiple pieces of toast w/ Earth Balance, green tea w/ soymilk
How did I feel? Good. During one of the early 122m sprints, I think my right rectus femoris was about to cramp, but it didn't. It kind of whined the rest of the time but it actually isn't sore today (yet, I'm now writing this in Sunday). I could have run for a much longer time. My legs felt a little tired later in the day, but not overly so.
What do I like about running? Oh, it's fun to feel what your body can do.
________________________________

I'm waiting for Eric to remind me of the stats. I forget how fast we were running. If that is important, I'm not sure.

I don't have much to say. It was fun. Sprinting and running fast is an entirely different kind of thing than running long distances. Both require a strength of mind, a discipline, but in different ways. Both require a trust in the universe and in yourself that there will be an abundance of energy and ability to get you through. But I feel like I'm utilizing different discipline muscles when we're doing this sprints and fast repeats. Learning to trust my body to be able to keep up, follow through. Learning to trust my mind that it won't give up on me, make me feel like a failure.

It's helpful that I have a sense that I know I can keep going. I know I have endurance. I know I won't give up. If I set out for x miles, I know I won't quit and, say, get a on a bus or something silly. I know I'll make it back. I know I can keep myself running, keep myself moving.

But with this faster running stuff, it's like learning to trust that I have enough reserve to maintain what I'm doing now in this moment. Start at one speed. Keep it going. Maintain it. Go faster even. Run without effort. Run with your chi. Let it flow. Open your stride. Faster. Breathe. Keep it going. These things, they are more in the moment. In the moment, committing to pushing, to not being afraid of the future. Not trying to figure out precisely, not measuring exactly how much energy you'll need to get there. Not being afraid of running out. Not trying to play it too safe so that at the end you have a sense of security. Running so that at the end of it, you have exhausted your reserves. That is it. I play it safe. Always conserving energy, never really committing to giving it everything I have.

I play in life this way. Measuring, being conservative, restricting myself, not really letting myself open to the possibility of fully committing to something in the moment that requires being there, present, standing for something. Sabotaging through restricted effort, through not really expressing myself, for a fear of running out of...that thing that is your ability to cope with your current situation.

I can and do put forth a certain amount of effort to pursue goals, and I can maintain a conservative level for a long long time. But when it comes to committing to giving something everything you have in a moment and maintaining this level of commitment for the next moment and the next, I become afraid. Of failure. Of running out. Of running out of my ability to cope. I hold back. I seldom, if ever, give something my full effort, my full attention.

Huh.

I think, Eric, we need to keep doing this speedwork stuff. I think I need it. Spiritually.

Yea. And by the way, this is why I love running. It is my dharma. It's what I do.

Story of Dad - Part 3

(WARNING to family and anyone else: Some of this is kind of ugly.)

Whew.
Okay. This is the hard part to get out, I guess. I've been delaying this part for over a year.

Where was I...
Story of Dad - Part 1
Story of Dad - Part 2
_____________________________________________________
...Back in Eric's room we'd watch Undressed. That felt normal. When my laundry was done, I'd fold it. That was normal. When the phone would ring and I'd retreat into the darkened kitchen--not normal.

Many hours passed like this. From about 1am, or whenever I figured I must have gotten the call, to I think around 6am. If that can be right. My Uncle Rich and Aunt Kathy drove my family home to McHenry from the hospital in Chicago, then downstate to pick me up in Urbana. Anyhow, it was really late at night and not even that early in the morning when we drove back up north. Wait. What am I leaving out.

I remember Rich and Kathy being on the front porch. I think Rich said something to Eric, thanking him for, you know, essentially babysitting me. Staying up with me. Being with me.

And then I remember being in the car. Rich's van. I'm not sure what I felt. Sort of a shaking inside. But at the same time still very calm. Shock, mostly, I suppose. I don't remember how it came up, but I remember Kathy talking about how my dad had been a priest in her church and had, I think, introduced her to Rich. Had encouraged her to write to him when he had been in Vietnam during the war. Stories, memories, impressions...soon I would collect these like they were the most precious of stones. Tell me something, anything, that I don't know about him, that I forgot about him. Remind me. Don't let me forget. Round him out as a person. Keep him alive.

But I digress.

I don't remember much else about the drive. Rich was speeding. Which was noteworthy because on the very same roads my dad had always been so sedate in his driving.

And then getting home. Man. This sucked. It was starting to become real. I knew it was going to be real soon. Anne was sitting on the couch with our cousin Jennifer. Matt. Matt. Where was Matt. He was going to go to school that day to participate in the Mock United Nations. My mom's friend Diane was going to go to keep and eye on him and be a support if he needed it. I remember being impressed by my mom taking people up on their offers of help. You know how often people will offer help in times of need? I think before, I had only witnessed people saying, oh, no, I'll be fine. It stood out in my mind at the time that things were really bad when you start taking people up on their offers.

I wanted to go to the hospital to see my dad. His body. My sister didn't want to go back. My brother was going to school, had already gone to school. My mom was coming with us. Rich and Kathy were driving. I feel like someone else may have been in Rich's van, but I can't imagine who it would have been. In the car, what stands out the most was my mom saying, incessantly, like a crazy person, "oh man, oh man, oh man, oh man, oh man..." Real fast-like. It made me feel uncomfortable. Like, shit! My mom's crazy. What do I do?! She would also talk about how she should have been there, how...

This is the story as I know it, remember it being told to me. He had gone into the hospital for a new round of chemo. He'd had a stint put in the first day there to facilitate the giving of the chemo. This was a tube on his chest that went into his body. After this operation, he was doing well enough that my mom went home that night. He had eaten more than he'd eaten in awhile and it looked like he had more energy. So she went home. The next morning, when she got into the hospital, all the doctors were around his bed. They were giving him chemo, but the *numbers* weren't making sense. My mom spent most of the day with him. She said that he would talk crazy, nonsensical talk when it was just the two of them, but when she'd call in the doctor, he'd become more coherent. The doctors were alternately concerned about *the numbers* and not. One doctor said he thought he'd seen a response to chemo like this before. My dad complained of pains in his legs and body. My mom attributed this to him being a former athlete and now not being active--the ache of atrophying muscles. My mom was reading Readers' Digest when a man came in to take some x-rays. She left the room. She read one article. And then another. She went back into the room. My dad, sitting in the hospital bed, was twisting around, reaching down, or something. She called, "Ray, Ray--" He turned back around to face her. His eyes rolled back in his head.

And that was it.

She called for the nurse.

The nurse called Code whatever-it-is-when-someone-is-dead/dying.

Then they "worked on him" for 45 minutes before pronouncing him dead at 12:35am, February 2, 2001.

No one knew it was coming.

And that's the part that sucks. For me. I don't like the idea of death sneaking up on you. Taking you when you don't know it. When you aren't in your mind to accept it. I suppose birth comes to you in that way. But I have this idea that I would very much like to say good-bye to myself. My ego. My identity that I have lived as for x number of years. Not everyone wants this, I know. (And you see how now I am intellectualizing my feelings??) Some people want to be taken swiftly off to their graves from their slumber, unbeknownst to them. But no, I want to say a farewell to the world, to myself. And I want that same opportunity for my dad. I don't know if he wanted it or not. I'm not sure of his final thoughts on death. Deaths, I understand, can be pretty unpleasant. And in the end, it doesn't matter. But it hurts me behind my eyes. Under my cheekbones. In my teeth. I feel acid in my mouth.

But in the car, my mom was consumed with guilt. She felt she should have been with him. That she had stayed away too long. That she hadn't said one last "I love you." That she hadn't apologized for being a "bitch." "Oh man, oh man, oh man..." I'm not sure what I said, what any of us said. Probably that he knew you loved him, that you were sorry for whatever, it wasn't your fault, no one knew... No one knew.

We got to the hospital. Was Grandpa Raven there now? Was Uncle Danny there? Maybe they were there together? I can't quite remember. I feel like they might have been. "Hello, Mary Beth..." Yea, I think they were. Riding in the elevator. Meeting up with the docs. They had his body in a room set a side for this very purpose. For family to see the dead body. It was a very small room. Like a closet. Big enough only for the hospital bed and a chair next to it. The lighting was appropriate, if I remember correctly. There was a lamp. I think then there was an end table next to the hospital bed to hold the lamp.

He was swollen in his body. His belly inflated, under cover of a blanket. From all the juice they pumped into him when they were working on him. And from the bacterial infection and the ensuing sepsis and hemolysis that is what actually killed him. His hair was cut much shorter than I had last seen it. My brother had buzzed it off for him, since he was expected to loose it from this chemo treatment.

His lips and eyelids were purple. He had been bleeding, or leaking fluid, from his ears and nose and they had tried to clean him up for me to see. His face didn't look anything like him. It was bloated and discolored. Everything about him was bloated. And he was still. Without breath. Dead. Yes. Dead. Indeed--dead. The only thing that was familiar about him was his feet. They were hidden under the blanket. But the shape of them was totally distinct. My dad had very flat feet (yes, he had also been an ultra-marathon runner) and he had really bad Morten's foot structure, which you can google if you don't know what that is, which gave the outline of his toes a particular triangular shape. And the particular angle they took when he was laying down, this was very familiar to me.

I touched his feet. Through the blanket. But it was the only thing that was him. Him. There was something about this that was humorous to me. About me feeling connected to his feet. Feeling only connected to his feet. The absurdity of him being dead. The gravity of knowing that my life, as I had known it, was changing. I found a bit of comfort in thinking that it had been just hours ago that he had been alive. That line between life and death was not so far away. Had I never been called, I would still not have known at this point. It would have not yet effected how I lived my life. I would not yet have missed him. He was not yet so far away.

As he is now, seven years later, he is quite far away.

I don't know how much time I spent in there with his body. When I left the room, I remember his doctor and nurse, or maybe just the nurse, being out there. Susan. Or something. Was her name. My family spoke with her for a short time. I don't know what was said. I think she said nice things about him.

And then we left the way we came. Across the hard, glossy tile floor. Down the elevator. I remember Danny acting more urgent, now that we were leaving. I remember wanting to drag my feet. Ever step away being a step away form Him. Not him in the physical. But him in time. I was very aware of time.

Time.

That next year, for one year, was a presence in my life. Ask me, when is my birthday? I can tell you without blinking. Without thinking. Without pausing to reflect upon the question for even a moment. I just know. Ask me, in that year, how long ago did your dad die. And in the same way, without hesitation: 9 hours, 21 minutes.

3 days, 16 hours, 56 minutes.

8 months, 1 week, 13 hours, 2 minutes.

In the same way, I knew. All the time. Exactly how far away. In time. He was. Like a ticking time bomb, but in reverse. I watched the minutes pass and add up to hours and weeks and months. It was the strangest thing. Strange in part because I've never heard of anyone talk about this before or since.

But we made our way to the car. And now I don't remember anything. Next thing I remember was being back at home. I know people started coming over. Was that this first day? I forget. I think Greg P, one of my dad's best friends, came over and cooked Italian food. He's Italian. I remember not eating. I didn't really eat for 4 days or so. Except for fruit. Fruit. The only thing I could bare to push through my lips, tolerate in my mouth without gaging. I remember my Aunt Marjean giving me a massage in my old bedroom. I remember there being lots of people in the house. Feeling alternately overwhelmed by all their bodies and comforted, to not feel alone. I remember there was lots of food, people brought lots of food. Which wasn't to feed me, but to feed all the people in the house.

I remember. My mom having a very difficult time with her last moment. My sister having a difficult time with her last moment. I remember saying that last moments shouldn't detract from a lifetime of good moments. But I also recognize that we always now say good-bye and "I love you" when we get off the phone, of being hyper aware now that, that any moment can be a last moment. And that they do matter. Last moments do matter, just not as much as the lifetimes of moments. And my mom was talking about his face. And the look on his face when he died/was dying. And I remember taking out the picture albums and saying, look, Mom, remember this moment? This was a good moment. And this one. And look at this one. Until the dining room table was covered in photographs and we were laughing at a lifetime of good moments. And I felt like, finally I knew how to contribute something. To help in some way. To aid the coping of some grieving. And I found what I needed for myself.

Each night, I assembled one photograph board. I was a perfectionist about it, spending hours on each. Coming up with themes, finding the best photographs of him to tell a story of sorts of who he was. What was important. Who was important. How he had lived. This was my therapy. My earliest attempt at processing my grief, my feelings, coming to terms with who he was, who he was to me, looking back over everything and finding a certain peace in it all.

I remember the nights before his memorial service and burial passing very differently than the days. These nights were peaceful to me. Introspective. I had, if not the downstairs to myself, at least the illusion of solitude. But the days...

I remember being at the funeral home. Deciding what to do with his remains. Rich and Kathy were there. With my mom and sister and I. My sister and I were very much in favor of cremating him without there being any display in a casket. Embalming rather grosses me out and seems very unnatural. Cremating seemed right. Dad had had no preference, he couldn't bare to think about it. And my mom had always before talked like she would've been in favor of cremation. But when it came to it, she wanted him embalmed. I remember crying with my sister on the stairs of the funeral home. I remember saying to her something to the affect of that if this is what mom felt like she needed, we'd have to accept this. We described to Mark, the funeral director, how he had been very bloated. Mark said he had once got someone from a size 16 to a size 10, that he was very good at what he did. Later that day though, Mark called. He had received Dad's body and, "he was beyond my level of skill." So there was to be no open casket. So no embalming. Direct to cremation. I felt much more at peace about this. I suppose I see fire as a purifier. I like the idea of returning to dust. We picked out a nice cherry-colored box. I liked the wood. I like good quality wood. It makes me me feel good and warm inside.

In that week, I remember driving my sister over to a friend's house. Matt came along for the ride. It was my dad's birthday that was the code to open the garage door and when we typed it in, we were all standing together. We looked at each other. Like he didn't want us to forget him? His car had his initials on the plate. I don't know if we laughed or cried or did both. In the car, my sister realized that dad had taught me and Matt how to drive, but he would not also teach her. Throughout that week, painful realizations like these happened a lot. Dad wouldn't be there when we graduated, got married... Wouldn't be there to quiz us on vocabulary words, foreign language words. And who would you go to when you wanted to know the Latin root of something? Who would you reference with your questions of philosophy? Theology? Questions about anything? Dad seemed to know something about everything. Martial arts anything...techniques and forms and I'd never see him do his nunchaku forms again. Unconditional love and support. Regular reports on the weather, when the lake first would freeze over, when the leaves would drop from the trees, when weird holes would appear in the yard... In every way that he had been useful to me in life, in every way that he had brought meaning to my life, I felt sort of robbed, cheated, at a loss about how to proceed.

A few days passed. I don't now remember much more than I have already mentioned. I don't remember where I slept. Maybe with my mom? Maybe on the couch? Oh, I remember Merc, my mom's next oldest sister, flew out to stay with us for a week. She was there to help with all the financial and paperwork stuff that comes when someone dies. I was impressed by this. I'm impressed by people knowing what to do in a moment of crisis. When people know instinctively how they are most useful and they do that thing. She came out to be a support to my mom, and I think she was very much so. I remember her tying up the trash when the bag wasn't all the way full and I was very bothered by this. Dad had been incredibly anal retentive about filling these trash bags to maximum capacity. I remember thinking, "Mary, this isn't a big deal. You're response is coming from your grief. Let it go."

The memorial service. I always felt like my family, my nuclear family, had an odd relationship with organized religion. I'm sure it was bound to be somewhat unconventional giving the relationships my parents had with the Catholic Church. When my dad's mom had died a few years prior, my Aunt Kathy, who is or was a Catholic liturgist by profession, had organized a ceremony in the funeral home. I don't know or understand my grandparent's relationship with Catholicism, or why exactly this decision was made, but it turned me on to this very personal style of service tailored to fit the life of the deceased. And so when my dad died, my mom and sister and I, if I remember correctly (not sure about my brother), all wanted Kathy to organize the service for my dad. It would not have made sense for it to be in a church. Neither he nor we had much of a relationship with any particular church. Considering my own death now, I could only imagine something happening in the Unitarian Church in Woodstock, but my dad had never attended anything there. Anyhow, so Kathy agreed to organize a service for him. It was important to me that not all the reading come from biblical scripture. I remember giving her a book I had given to him that had pictures from the Hubble Telescope and quotes from various physicists and authors about...well, the big questions. Those answers and questions that blur the boundaries of science and god, that explore the mystery of creation, that don't necessary take sides in matters of belief but will stand in awe of the magnificence of the universe. I don't have the book with me, it must be at my mom's house, else I'd find the part she had used.

That morning. No. Backing up, the day before.

Was the visitation. What a fantastic day! Really. I was happy and upbeat and I felt full of life and impassioned. What was not to enjoy, really, I saw so many people that were important to me, important to my dad from all throughout his life. People flew in from all over the country. They told me stories about my dad I'd never heard before. They talked about how great of a person he was. Integrity. Integrity. That was the buzzword about my dad. He had more integrity than... And funny stories I'd heard before, about him practicing Latin while hanging upside down from a branch in a tree, thinking that the increase in blood flow would increase his brain functioning. And funny stories I'd not heard before, like he'd had a speech impediment (or something) when he was a kid and had introduced himself as "pee-wee puddy." I'm not sure how this is possible, to get from his name to pee-wee puddy, but it makes me chuckle. People liked the picture boards...now I've observed that they are quite common at visitations and memorial services (but mine were really good. I know, I'm not modest.)...but I really enjoyed how people looked them over, how they stimulated people's memories and conversations. How they brought him into the room. There wasn't a casket. Just the cherry wood box. With two pictures, one on either side, I had blown up of him to 8" by 10". Interestingly, they were both pictures I had taken of him, one being the first photograph I had ever taken. We had been camping. The leaves here changing colors and blurred in the background. He was wearing a red shirt that had faded almost to pink. The other was of him holding onto a slender tree with the lake in the background. He was wearing a red and black plaid shirt, if I remember now corectly. It made me happy we used my photographs.

My sister and brother hung out with their friends in what was supposed to be a break room or snack room for the family. I understood it to be common that younger kids would take it over with their friends so they could mingle with their friends and grieve in their own way. I think my mom may have wanted them to be upfront more, but maybe not. I understood their needing to be with their friends more than with all the people who were visiting. I think my mom wanted me to be standing with her more, but she had her posse of sisters to tend to her needs and I was talking with a lot of people on my own. I remember speaking with Micheal, my dad's best friend from college, about death. He said something about how could he exist and then not exist if matter cannot be created or destroyed...or something. I didn't agree with what he said, but I didn't feel like arguing for the non-existence of my father so I let whatever it was he said sit. I remember the martial arts Masters show up, it was my job to talk with him, I think my mom told me that directly...which was intimidating as hell! Many of those people I held in incredibly high esteem and I felt very awkward. But also flattered by their presence and their words. I remember our long-time family friends and the very good friends of my dad's, looking pale, their grief evident by the tightened expressions on their faces, wanting to console them. Much of my time that day, I felt like I was there for other people who were processing their grief. We shared our stories. They felt closer to him by talking with me, and me to him through them. But I settled into a routine of being upbeat and talkative and "on" and present for other people. I laughed a lot that day. I had a good time.

At the end of the day, I felt very relaxed. At peace. Like I'd had a really really good meal and was just going to sit happily and digest it for awhile.

The next day was the memorial service. I remember 10am being a number. I vaguely remember the dress I wore. It may have been black with five inch wide white flowers, but maybe not. I don't have it anymore. I don't like floral patterns. That day, that morning, I woke up, still in the happy upbeat place I'd been the night before. And it felt wrong to me. I wanted to return to that more introspective place. A more reticent self. I wanted to grieve today. Today was not about me being "on" for other people, I was not going to put on a facade. But I had to find another part of myself.

I remember being in my old bedroom. I suppose this is where I was sleeping then? I don't remember if there was a bed in there or not. And contemplating how I was going to get back into myself. I remember... The last thing my dad had given me was a piece of paper that said, "Success. Meaning in life is found in what you do, what and who you appreciate, and the attitude you bring. Adapted from Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl" He had given me a few copies, each with the wording slightly differently, but this was his final draft. It was time to go, I think someone was beginning to call me from the downstairs, but I wasn't ready to go yet. I hadn't gotten back into myself. I really wanted to be able to cry that day. I wanted to be in my own being, being aware of whatever I was really feeling. I wanted this day to be about me and Dad and reflecting in that painful way about him dying. I wanted to feel what was painful and not be afraid of it. I had to reconnect with him. I took out one of the copies of this meaning of life quote, turned it over, and wrote something to him. What, I am not sure. I didn't make two copies. And it went with the cherry wood box into a fiberglass box that was glued shut and buried underground. But I remember it starting something like, "Hey dad, you know I don't believe in an afterlife or anything, but if I'm wrong, and such a thing does exist in some way and you get this..." And then, I don't know, I probably told him I loved him. Thanked him for many a thoughtful canoe ride where we experienced many a sunset together. For being a source of unconditional love and support. For being the best dad that any girl could ever want.

On the way to the funeral home, my siblings and mother also wrote on the back of this. I may have put it in an envelope. I felt resigned. Perhaps. Very inside of myself.

We walked into the funeral home together. I forget if it hit me then. I think it did. Sort of a BAM feeling. No, that's not right. It was more of a...the air is being sucked out of the room but also the pressure is increasing. And I didn't want to look anyone in the eyes. Whew. Deep breath. I was afraid of making contact with people and pulling on a facade I didn't feel like wearing. People had already assembled, were sitting in rows of chairs from the front to the back for the long room. I was glad I didn't have to interact very much with people. I only wanted to be with people I didn't have to speak with, be phony at all with. My brother and sister and I made our way to the front of the room and took seats on a couch that was front and center. It was nice to have a couch. I was between the two of them, if I remember correctly. My brother to my right, my sister, my left. I have a sense my mom was next to my sister, but I could be wrong. There were Kleenex boxes nearby. I think the couch had a floral print. I don't like floral prints. But I suppose it's fitting in a funeral home. I remember being both hyperaware and underaware of my surroundings, of the people around me, of both wanting this thing to get started and also wanting it never to have happened. Part of me really enjoyed the realness of the whole experience of this thing called death. Life seemed, and does still seem, very real when you are close to death. There's a beauty to this, however perverse.

Writing this, now, I'm aware of just how much I value having siblings. I can't imagine life without them. Or, rather, I don't really want to. Thanks, guys, for being here. Maybe you'll read this. Mom has said that the hard thing about loosing Dad, well, one of the hard things, is that she lost her co-parent. No one else loves us the way they did. No one shares the joy in our successes or feels the pain of our misfortunes in the same way as they did together. No one else gets us the way they understood us together, and it is hard for her to not have someone to share that with anymore. Inversely, I'm aware I share a something with my siblings with regards to our relationships with our parents, and with each other, that I can't share with anyone else. And this is special.

Aunt Kathy moved to the front of the room, behind the podium. I forget the order of things. But I remember that Danny talked for a time about growing up with Dad. He told some funny stories. Some, I'd heard before, some I had not. He started to cry at some point. Michael spoke for a time about dad at Seminary? I forget. I forget if Dave talked or not. I rather think not...I remember him looking surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, grief-stricken. I don't think he would've been able to speak. What for being a teacher, someone who is "on" a lot, and often the life of a party, he is a very private person, I am realizing. I remember Bonnie talked about doing martial arts and teaching with him for many years. She told a few stories that were very amusing and complimentary. I always got such a kick out of what a tough-sort of guy he was. :) And then Greg P, and Brent, and Joe, and...Melinda? Someone else from work got up and talked and told some stories about Dad at work. All honoring my dad, alternately amusing and heart wrenching... I remember wishing that we were video-taping this. Then thinking how inappropriate I am for wanting such a thing, no one does this. Kathy did some readings, some of the traditional Catholic variety, for the people who need those things to be said, and others of the more...whatever variety, for people like me who needed something more philosophical and spiritual and less religious.

And then. I don't remember. There was probably some sort of final good-bye sort of thing. But I next remember being in the back of a limo or hearse or some sort of vehicle like that. Holding dad's remains in the cherry box. Being in the front car in the string of funeral cars. Was I in this car? Or was that only mom and I was in a different car? I don't, I guess, remember. I think we were together though, because I remember Mark, the funeral director, driving. Talking about how it was a short distance to the cemetery. About how, when you had a longer journey, there was a big concern for loosing cars, the train breaking. But I could be making this up, I make things up sometimes. But shortly, we arrived at the cemetery.

Acquiring this site had been one of the things we'd done in the days between death and memorial service. We wanted a gravesite by a tree. There was only one remaining and it was next to a dying oak tree. This was amusing to us and absolutely perfect, considering the saga of my dad and his own dying oak tree. It was replaced by an elm, I think.

It was February. There was snow on the ground. Maybe about an inch or two. I remember it being more crunchy than soft. It must have been at least a few days old. The ground must have been frozen. We drove around the cemetery, to the back near where the site was. There were a few chairs assembled on some Astroturf-like blanket. Those were for us, the immediate family. There may have been some sort of overhead protection set up. This isn't clear in my memory. I think I was crying a lot. I had been crying a lot. All through the service, I had been crying. Leaning into my brother, hugging my sister to me. I think we all were crying. My sister, as do I, I suppose, turns various shades of red when she cries. And now, sitting at the gravesite. I forget if it was covered or was just a big whole. It probably was covered. I don't remember.

There were bagpipes. Played by a man in a Scottish kilt. This was some Law Enforcement thing, to have bagpipes at funeral. Greg P had arranged for him to be there. I loved the bag pipes. There's something really emotional about them, they trigger something deep within me. Maybe the reedy quality of them? Maybe the sheer magnitude of their sound.

Sometimes I think of the Auden poem about death. I always loved that poem. Though it wasn't my experience at all. Maybe because he wasn't my partner, he was my father, but...I still like it. Here it is if you aren't familiar:

W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

The sounds of these words and their rhythm feels really good to me. And so. The bagpipes played. Some words were said. What, I'm not sure. I'm not sure by whom. We placed the cherry wood box with his cremation remains into the fiberglass box. Tucked our letter to him underneath it. Mark applied some adhesive to the edges of the fiberglass box, pushed down on the top, uncovered the hole in the ground and placed it into the earth. We probably threw in some dirt and roses, because that is what you do. I vaguely remember doing this. We were all crying, I imagine. I cried a lot that day.

There was a meal afterwards that I don't really remember. And then. I don't know. Time started passing. I observed it. Somehow, I went back to Urbana. I forget who brought me back. No. I think it was my mom and my Aunt Nancy. I think they made the drive.

My friends and roommates and made me a "Welcome back, Mary" banner, which was awesome and fun and unexpected. Danielle gave me most of a box of the Hazelnut wafer cookies we were both totally hooked on. I forget what else, but they were great. I was touched that they thought to give me a "welcome home."

That very next weekend, I had National Guard. It was the first of my responsibilities I was to return to. I showed up with my rank on my lapel upside down. What a fool. I'd never done anything like that before or since. And the First Sergeant and some other people in my Chain of Command, were like, "Raven, maybe you shouldn't be here. Do you need to leave?" "No, no, I need to be here." I had to learn to function again. I re-pinned my rank right side up.

A few days or weeks later Kristel called me. We hadn't spoken...since the awful fight we'd had however many years ago. Her parents had sent her my dad's obituary. She was living in C-U in fact. She'd lost contact with Liz. I was never so glad to hear from anyone. Nor so surprised. It probably was a very hard call for her to make.

I have a few distinct memories that following semester that were significant to me.

I remember sitting in my Spanish class, which I was struggling at horribly but needed to pass to graduate, and my teacher commented on what a beautiful day it was. But he didn't say, "this is a beautiful day," he had made some specific comment about the weather outside. The window was wide open. It was sunny and warm and peaceful and perfect in that way that, when you're coming out of a winter in the midwest, the last place you want to be is indoors. And I thought about all the observations my dad had made about the weather in letters to me over the years...and I started to cry. Right there in my Spanish grammar class. I felt foolish. I looked down. Hid behind my book. Odd things like that, like someone commenting benignly on the weather, could trigger extreme emotional responses me in when I was unprepared to deal with them. Atmospheric observations, writing about people and their experience of nature, has always since resonated with me. Interestingly, I had never made the connection before, that this is perhaps something I either got from my dad, or that I have picked up since he died, perhaps to feel closer to him and how he experienced much of the world.

Also, I participated in a grieving group at school that semester. I think we met only 5 times or so, but it was very much needed. To feel like I wasn't the only person going through something like this. So needed. There were a few people that came only once or twice, but there were three of us that came every week. Each of us, our dad's had died. Our dad's had all been 59 years old. They had all died in the last year. We had each been a "daddy's girl." One girl was Thai. Buddhist. Her dad had also had cancer. I forget now if she was wearing black or gray, but it was customary for her to wear black for a long time and then gray. And I envied her this coping mechanism. Perhaps, I'll take that on next time I experience extreme grief. Her dad had been a Thai Buddhist Monk. In sounded like that in Thailand, most men were trained in meditation and had spent some of their lives as monks. She had pushed the button or flipped the switch to have him cremated. There was something about a string being tied to her or two him, around her finger. I forget. But I enjoyed hearing the rituals of her culture and how she and her family coped with and processed grief. The other girl, she was student teaching little kids. Her dad died of a heart attack. She was really cute in that central-Illinois-cute-white-girl-grade-school-teacher-in-overalls kind of way. Not someone I would normally feel I had anything in common with, but we shared this huge bond. So it was intellectually interesting and spiritually satisfying, to feel connected to two girls who were very different from me in some ways, but not different at all in others.

Hmm.

I'm not sure what else to say. I remember spending a lot of time hanging out with Eric and my house mates, discussing food and ethics and morality and the military. I remember being determined to graduate and get out of C-U, to escape that inner emotional hell that had haunted me for much of my time there. Taking Taiji and ice skating. And I had a huge crush on my teacher...Taka. :) He was Japanese. And athletic. Becki would always go, "TakaTakaTakaTaka..." harassing me. I remember making plans with Becki to move to Chicago. Going for some late night walk with her, staying up until dawn, bonding...thinking to myself, I hadn't let myself do that, to not get any sleep in AGES. I'd been so careful to not disrupt my sleep patterns, trying to keep crazy manic-Mary at bay.

And now. I'm at the end. Sort of. I have been saying, to myself, and to a select few confidants, that I've been hung up and blocked by this, by my dad's illness, by his death. It's been 13 years now since he was diagnosed. Thirteen years. What a number. And to remember that from my eyes now, I was such a kid. It's taken me over a year to write this stuff. It's not good writing. Not good reading. It's totally personal. I'm not sure anyone would want to read it or if posting it on a public blog is the thing to do. But I have felt the need to get it out of me and out there. Somewhere else. And now. And now. It's time to begin.