#buniontalk

I've never considered myself much of a runner.  Running is something I took up because I have the coordination of a newborn colt, and the grace and swiftness in athletic movements of a three-legged cat -- which prevents me from enjoying/contributing in organized sporting activities.  Even the intermural ones. Not to mention the fact that I love napping -- and staying indoors when it's raining.  About two years ago I had a spell where I got really into running mainly because the gym Charlie and I joined had personal TVs on each treadmill.

Real runners zen-out when they run, move with swiftness and majesty, know exactly when to load up on Gatorade and have definitive reasons/clear positions in the morning v. evening running time and pre v. post stretching debates.

In spite of the large chasm between myself and all the real runners of the world -- I made the hair-brained decision to start training for a marathon a few months back.  And, GUYZ - after dedicating months and pretty much all my free time to running + the discovery that I started sending text messages like the one below  -- I think that I mayyy  have reached real-runnerdom status:

{I have arrived. O-fficially}

I have no idea how to feel about said arrival or where to go from here.

A Kentucky-kind of morn

He makes me lie down in green pastures.  He leads me beside still waters.  He restores my soul. {Ps.23.2}

A weekend ago was my last in Kentucky for a bit.  Mom and I decided to wake up early and head over to Southland to volunteer in the Community Gardens.  We spent the morning picking raspberries and seeking out the most-perfect among many tomatoes.

While I was initially reluctant to rise early -- I find myself now in DC reflecting on the past weekend

and being drawn to the simplicity, quiet, and lovely way we spent the morning above all else.  The moments of that morn blended together so beautifully that it felt like sacred time -- the tranquility of dawn, interrupted in gleeful bursts of children's cries from the soccer field nearby;  Mom chuckling at my ineptness in the realm of gardening and her quick and sage advice on finding the tomatoes that were actually ripe-for-the-pickin'.

At one point, a few little boys wandered over to help us pick raspberries -- their exclamations and rapt attention to the cause added joy to the already lovely endeavor.  We even found a wolly worm and marveled and laughed together at it's fuzziness and the way it creepy-crawled along.

Kentucky -- I miss your autumn mornings already.

from the fog.

Back from the blogging hiatus for a new york minute.  This week has been ponderous - infused with an abundance and bizarre amalgamation of happenings+feelings.

I am le tired and can't really articulate anything or pull much out of my head (as evidenced by the previous sentence), so instead I've been ruminating over these quotes:

One reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgment, and love to revel in our righteous outrage, is that it spares us from the impotent pain of empathy, and the harder, messier work of understanding.

--

Perhaps the reason we so often experience happiness only in hindsight, and that chasing it is such a fool’s errand, is that happiness isn’t a goal in itself but is only an aftereffect. It’s the consequence of having lived in the way that we’re supposed to — by which I don’t mean ethically correctly so much as just consciously, fully engaged in the business of living. In this respect it resembles averted vision, a phenomena familiar to backyard astronomers whereby, in order to pick out a very faint star, you have to let your gaze drift casually to the space just next to it; if you look directly at it, it vanishes. And it’s also true, come to think of it, that the only stars we ever see are not the “real” stars, those cataclysms taking place in the present, but always only the light of the untouchable past.

{-T.Kreider -- both via We Learn Nothing}