{my topography}

In the spaces between

The roads have turned to mud now: layers of ice-hard earth thawing to slush, sticky and trampled. The yellow evening light is speckled with the flutterng wings of bugs, newly hatched, air eddying around their tiny exoskeletons.

We go for a run, just the two of us, conversation filling in the spaces between hard breathing uphill. A chainsaw whines and the scent of fresh cut wood makes my nostrils flare. Our feet sink a little with each step; muscles suddenly thrumming with heat and momentum. The air is soft, and while the snow still lingers at the edges of the fields, the brown grass lies exposed to the sun most places.

“Every step I take my feet sink,” DH says. The setting sun is at our backs. The sky is like the water I dip my brushes into: a bowl of pale ultramarine and pale saffron spilled at the horizon.

We’re holding hands. It’s the end of our run, and we’re walking back along the muddiest part of the road. In our heads both of us sing, every step you take…

Neither of us sings it aloud, but I know we’re both tuned in to this same static. “Did you just sing that song?” I ask, to be sure.

He nods, laughs. Even more than me, he’s the one doing this: filling in the spaces between thoughts with the flack of a thousand sitcoms, commercials, songs, clichés.

We do this all the time. Pop culture interference broadcasting stuff into the spaces between our thoughts. A word triggering the memory of another. Phrases tumbling unbidden into the twilight in spite of us. Turbulence in the spaces between. It’s a lovely day.

In my palm I feel the heat of him there next to me; so much between us unsaid.

What were like, before it was like this? Before thoughts were so commonly shared: before mass media and marketing, email, texting, technology instantaneously and exponentially making each thought at once more available and more clichés. In the spaces between, there was once an arc of silence. A breath beat without stimulus.

Now our minds hum constantly with unbidden music. Random access memory. Filler.

Without it, what would we be like?

The only difference

Friday night my heart felt like a hundred rain splattered puddles: each one reflecting a different small circle of cloud covered sky; so many different things to do all in exactly the same few moments.

Friday I was a flood of hormonal mood swings before I start to bleed, and I felt anxious and sad and utterly overwhelmed. Also nearly sick again. Then Saturday came, and the sun was shining through tatters of clouds and I went for a run for the first time in a month, and dear god, why can’t I remember this?

I need to exercise.

Every day I need to feel my body move, outside, among trees and open spaces, side stepping puddles, feeling my lungs suck in cold air. I need to exercise not because I want to look a certain way, but because I need to feel a certain way. It’s the only variable I can think of that genuinely affects how I manage stress. It’s the only thing that really makes a difference: being outdoors, feeling my blood hot in my cheeks, feeling my muscles sore afterwards.

Exercise brings balance to my life, yet regularly in the winter I let it slip by. Day after day I come home, to the sun staining the west a meek orange, and the shadows already those of dusk. I feel selfish then, setting out on a run, having not spent time with my small boy.

Yet without exercise I start to become irrational. Guilt becomes an entire harbor in my heart, sheltering a whole fleet of inadequacies: I do not spend enough time with my son; I don’t cook enough or clean enough or see my husband enough; I am not a good enough teacher or writer or reader.

The only difference between days like this, and days where I feel like I’m on top of the world is that on the days where I’m kicking ass, I’ve also gotten outdoors and moved.

Seriously. It’s that easy. And that incredibly difficult. Does anyone else experience this?

synchopation

I have the day off and I’m gleefully miring my way through an inconceivably long to-do list. I have yet to figure out how to accomplish my every day life and everything else that needs to get done.

The biggest thing I’ve accomplished: completely reorganizing and painting my studio. Last year sometime, in the middle of the winter, under a blanket of depression, I painted my studio a pale blue, which felt like a bad idea almost seconds after the last coat was applied. Without meaning to, I began to use my studio space less and less, until I would go for a week or two without ever entering it.

This affected me on a subconscious level. I felt creatively terrified. Performance anxiety corroded any attempt to splash color across the page or really sink back into a routine of writing. Without a space I felt comfortable in, I resorted to writing at the kitchen table, in the midst of the hubbub of daily life, and routinely sabotaged my own efforts even there, buy skimming through my favorite blogs, or trying to keep up with the voracious demands of my gig over at Parent Dish.

Somehow the entire month of September (and nearly all of October) was swallowed by the murky creature of un-ambition. All summer I was entrenched in the rich sensory beauty of the outdoors; of leisure; good food; good novels. Then fall arrived with the first nip in the air and the hillsides turning orange, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. My syncopation was jagged and blurry; like a scarecrow trying to dance. Somehow with the shift in seasons I stopped doing all the things that I love: running, writing, art, and instead became (maybe necessarily) submerged in the fabric of work.

Headlong there, in the classroom, participating in the daily alchemy of turning eighteen individuals into a working group of learners; time spent watching spiders eat grasshoppers in the terrarium; and writing stories about magical shrinking potions. Time spent tying shoes and counting shells and navigating small sorrows. Time spent feeling nearly exhausted every afternoon; always empty, hungry, anxious.

And then I came home a few days ago to an empty house (Bean and DH were out running errands) and despite feeling hungry and grumpy, I decided to pull on my running shoes and head out in the perfect autumn sunlight for a run.

On the way back, passing a long field that follows the road for a good stretch, a small pony saw me running, and cantered up to the fence and then ran with me. I stopped and petted her tousled mane, and then continued, delighting in the unexpected equine attention. And then I realize: I was no longer either hungry or grumpy. My mood and body had been off kilter because I’ve been so out of rhythm. My soul misses running, it seems. Just as it misses moving through steady sun salutes on my yoga mat on my sunny studio floor.

So in the past few days I feel like I’ve come back into orbit around the quiet fire of my inner self. I’ve started running again, and I want to do it nearly every day. My body needs to move, just as my mind needs the quiet emptiness of one foot falling in front of the other along the gravel road.

So I’ve cleaned my studio and tackled my to-do list, and finally feel like I’m at least leaning towards a place of balance. Not quite there yet, but at least facing the right direction now.

As I write, thousands (really!) of lady bugs have migrated to our house. They are landing on the windows, twirling through the hazy autumn air in their bumbling flight. Do they hibernate? What are they doing here? Some say lady bugs are good luck. I’m content to imagine that they are.

Feeling the earth spin

I used to be able to lie down on the grass and relax into the very center of my solar plexus and feel the earth spin. Really. My whole body would tune to the thrumming velocity of the earth twirling on its axis very fast, gravity pressing my body into the ground. Then one day I couldn’t do it any more. Now, I’ll lie down like I did today after a run, and for a brief moment I’ll feel myself almost slip to that place, but then I’ll snap back into myself, like snapping back from almost falling asleep. Has this ever happened to you?

Running Mix

Back to the gym this week, after a week off feeling sickish. It’s still mud season here, and still cold, but my sister is luring me westward for a half marathon this summer… and some tiathlons closer to home are looking better and better, especially since the wicked spinning class I took last week that reminded me of how much I love to ride.

Enjoy the mix, and yes, I know, most of it is totally 80’s throwback music. But listen to it while you’re running a 5k. It works, trust me.

Finding the beat

Last week I was like a satellite thrown out of orbit, twirling in crazy loops from all the scrambled sleep, and the on-edge waiting. I let myself slip haphazardly out of my routine of writing mornings, first thing while the house is still sighing in its sleep.

I’d hear the alarm, and peer at it through mostly closed lashes and then hit the snooze button with vigor, before turning to inhale the sweet sleeping scent of my boys, pressed at odd angles to each other. Light would slip softly through the wooden slats of the window shades, zebra-striping the sienna paint on our wall with gold, and mourning doves would gather below the feeder outside and coo like a clutch of kerchief clad old biddies waiting for a bakery to open.

I’d get up, staggering. If I was lucky they’d both stay asleep while I showered and made coffee, and I’d pocket those moments of silence like a thief. But I found myself missing the routine; the rhythm of bowing down first at the page, each new day.

Instead of writing, I carved some time out on the treadmill at the gym everyday last week (the weather too cold until today to be outdoors.) In doing so I began to remember this about myself: moving, running, doing, is anther way to bow down at the door of all that is good in my life.

Moving, one foot and then the other, in a steady rhythm, feeling my lungs and heart send bright red blood circling through capillaries makes me feel immediately at right with my life, with the twirling stars, with the sap running, with my all my hopes. Now, to do both: to run and to write. This is my goal this week.

**
I’ll totally post the running mix! Just have to get back on DH’s computer—tomorrow, maybe?

In the meantime, tell me, what few things do you find you really need to do every day to feel whole (even if you don’t always get to do them.)

Running in the rain

I went running for the first time today since our move six weeks ago. It felt a bit like remembering how to bike again after a long hiatus: the synchronized action of my limbs following the kinesthetic blueprint of forward motion.

I never wrote about not running the marathon, but I didn’t, and it made me sad for weeks. Part of the reason I didn’t run was because we moved THE VERY NEXT DAY, and that was entirely poor and ridiculous timing (what WAS I thinking when I scheduled it?) But most of the reason was because I developed a stress fracture during the latter half of my training program and despite dutiful trips to the physical therapist and cool green orthotics for my shoes, my shin would hurt excruciatingly for days after a run and eventually I was forced to weigh my options. Run the marathon and be injured for the summer or, skip it, move to our new with a wholly functioning body, and enjoy the rest of the summer sports that I so dearly love.

So I didn’t run, and then suddenly I was immersed in the massive project of unpacking in an unfinished house, and somehow six weeks have whipped by in a blur. But I’ve missed running. A little like a craving, a listlessness in my tendons at night. So today when I leapt off the front stoop and took off down our winding gravel drive, I was grinning.

It felt so good. And it felt so bad.

Do you know how much muscle tone you loose if you just up and take six weeks off of any regular exercise? A lot. Throw in weaning a baby, and the ensuing hormone restructuring, and it’s a sure-fire recipe for feeling the way I imagine sea turtles must, loafing their way up some sandy escarpment to make a nest.

A four mile run took me a lot longer than a four mile run did a month and a half ago, and afterwards I sat in the corner of the couch and begged for someone to make me a PBJ and a glass of milk because I couldn’t move. But surprisingly, during the run I was so distracted by the beauty of this place where I live that I barely noticed how unmistakably plod-like my gate was.

The wet air was fragrant. Everything is in bloom or fruit now: raspberries are ripe along the hedgerows, and elder berry blossoms, burdock, cornflowers, and Black Eyed Susans spread out across the fields like a thousand speckled suns. And somehow, the time mostly went by without my noticing.

It is inevitable I’ll feel it tomorrow. I’ve started to notice how my body no longer forgets the cumulative effects of the things I do to it each day. But there’s something of value in having one’s attention be focused on one’s body in this way: noticing it for the things it can do, for the way it feels, rather than simply for the way it looks. I’m ready for this again—especially after spending a week on the beach being all too aware of how I appear to the rest of the world.

(You know how the flight attendant always cautions that “your baggage may have shifted during the flight,” ? Let’s just say this is a good way to describe my physical accoutrements as well, since Bean. )

Self Portrait Tuesday: Time #1

I ran 11 miles today. It felt like an eternity and I wanted to give up many more than eleven times, but I didn’t. I chose to run indoors after my last long run left me chilled to the bone, but regretted my decision. It was sunny outside even though it was cold, and the scenery would have kept me engaged. Running indoors is synonymous with boredom, and though I brought these stories to listen to on my iPod, and could be seen from time to time grinning from ear to ear as a result, I couldn’t shake the monotony of running in place.

One foot after the other, staring at myself in the mirror for 1 hour and 45 minutes makes time do crazy things. This much I know: time is not a constant medium. In the last half hour of running, when both knees were burning and I was dying for Gatorade (which I forgot to bring) and I had to pee, it felt like each minute was stretched out the way a tape sounds when the tape film gets pulled. The song blares at warp speed, all blurry and ridiculous.

Other times —-like when on the couch and write in my notebook with the bright morning sun flooding in through the windows—an hour or two feels like a small pocketfull of minutes. I could sit there forever, writing. No amount of time feels long enough. Bean always wakes too soon.

So I’ve found that staying present in the moment: running only for these steps that are happening now; holding my mind in check, right NOW—is the only way humanly possible to make it through 11 miles. This is also how I make it through the rough days when everything’s off kilter; and how I plan to make it through 26.6 miles.

Taken moment by moment, the quality of time evens out. Now is NOW. Thid moment I can bear—and then suddenly this moment has become the next.

***

Here is a brillaint piece of writing about time.

Here are other self portrait takers.

Pushing limits

Before I curl up in a heap of down comforters in front of the TV with a big cup of tea and some graham crackers to watch how the winter games turned out, let me say this: I ran 9 miles in 20 degree weather today.

Nine.

I wore these, and several fleecy thermal layers that made me look much like a mutant superwoman smerf when I pull the skull-tight hood up over my head, but for the most part I was warm. My breath left my body in clouds. Snot ran a constant clear river down my nose.

But the running itself wasn’t that hard, and I enjoyed moving up the long dirt road near our new house, past bucolic red-barn farms and fields where the snow has mostly melted, although now all the streams have turned rock-solid again. Along the tree line at the field’s edge I spotted deer. In the powdery snow and dust at the edge of the road, tracks of others that had run here before: dogs or coyotes, deer, squirrels, raccoon.

The return part of the loop took me along a main road through the center of two small towns, and then directly west into the setting sun. The sky was overcast over the mountains, but where the sun was falling, each cloud was shredded and on fire. I was almost blinded by it: that bright angled golden sunlight that washes the world at sunset. The pavement was inky and blurred below my feet, pounding rhythmically.

The last mile or so had me wanting to give up. Wind in my face, and the final road to bring me back home kept not being where I thought it was. Like a mirage, it was always just a little farther on.

I kept thinking of the quote someone wrote on the dry erase board above the drinking fountain at my gym: if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten. So I kept running, and finished 1.5 hours.

Back at the house, I saw a bald eagle circling the western meadow. Triumph.

Yesterday, winter festivities

I love living in a place where instead of complaining about the cold, people celebrate it for a good cause. There was hot coffee to be had amidst the revelry, as groups of costume clad folk made their way down to the water and JUMPED IN. There was whooping and gafawing and general yodeling going on as the DJ played “Cold as Ice” and brave souls got wet. Mind you, they needed to break the ice from the water first.

I’m not a brave soul, but I took pictures.

We had a wonderful morning outside in bright winter sunlight, an afternoon nap that stretched on until early evening—the three of us to a bed. Then I managed to squeeze in a five mile run at the gym which brought my first week of marathon training to a close with my cumulative total miles run adding up to twenty. This is the first winter I haven’t gone into hibernation, and I’m pretty thrilled.

Enjoy the chilly pics. There are more here.

Ski jump eyelashes.

Ice sculpture

Rocks on ice.

Uncarved blocks of ice.

Chilly.