Keep to Small

Accepting oblivion is the challenge I find myself facing these days. Time erases us all eventually; and even when the most famous of names linger--Jesus, say, or Shakespeare or Mohammed or Confucius--the details that were the experiences of their lives have evaporated: the smells and tastes they felt, the texture of their skin, the light or shadow in the eyes are lost to us forever.

How much more so for those of us only ordinarily known? The world will little note nor long remember, Lincoln said. Within a century and a half at most, everyone I've ever known will be, like me gone. I know, this isn't the sort of thing most people like to dwell on, but I can't seem to help myself.

This reality used to make me want to build skyscrapers, move a nation, create monumental works that everyone would know throughout the ages. Or, when I saw the unlikelihood of all that, I got depressed. But now, at 45, I've stumbled on a new response: less. Less ambition, less achievement, less notoriety. As it says in an old Japanese story about a boy wandering alone through a countryside ravaged by a demon, "Avoid large places; keep to small."

More and more I find myself absorbed (as much as the duties of life will allow) by the ephemeral, by what can never be recorded or preserved. Each time I run, I revel in the unrepeatability of the experience. I take each step, and it disappears forever in the wake of the next step, and the next. Each breath is an extinction.

The writing goes best when, at the end of each entry, I release what I've made. Of course, I still believe very much in polishing and revising what I write, but generally now I want to make my writing smaller, not larger, than it was. I want to burnish each one, piece by piece, then let them accumulate into whatever pattern they will--or not. Right now, a pile suits me as much as a mosaic; I'm more intrigued these days by what I find rather than what I make.

I'm convinced that each moment, when you look at it correctly, gleams. Then it's gone, but if you take that moment, the gleam is there. I want to be able to go that slowly and have that little that I can take the time to see.

But who'll pay me to sit on my rear end and do that? So I bustle about, trying to catch my naps from busy-ness when I can. I know that a lot of people would call my attitude "giving up" or "quitting on life," etc., etc. Until you've tried it, though, you have no idea how delicious stepping off the treadmill of expectation can be.

The hard part, or course, is that when you strip away the weight of the "oughts," you're left with yourself. I'm still getting used to that, and learning to beg the forgiveness of all those who have to live with this oddly preoccupied, remorselessly strange person I am. I'm still pretty bad at being me. It helps, though, to come to the realization that that small task really is an acheivement worthy of a lifetime. Somehow, it makes it easier for me accept--even celebrate--that someday that life will be gone.

Spirit and Flesh

For a long time now, words have interested me as a place where the body and spirit meet. My body makes it possible for me to articulate words: to say them aloud (or hear them), to sign them in the air with my fingers, to write or type them on a page or computer screen.

Yet words are also spiritual creatures; they only mean what they mean because we believe they do, and agree in that belief with others. And like all spiritual things, language is larger than me as an individual. It existed before me and will continue long after this body of mine has turned itself into nourishment for the earth and air. I can contribute to langauge in meaningful ways with what I write and say, but in the end words transcend me; they are a stream all their own in which, in my lifetime, I will dip only my small cup.

I find myself thinking about this because I'm considering the words I and others now use to talk about my body. These months of running have changed my physical shape and the ways people name the body they see when they look at me.

Clothes I used to wear now sag and billow on my frame, so much so that I've had to start acquiring a new wardrobe. My posture has altered, my lungs work more easily (even when I run hard), and my toenails are a bit more bruised than they used to be.

The words others use deal speak mainly about the weight I've lost. They talk admiringly of how "thin" or "skinny" I've become, and I certainly enjoy hearing that; I'd even like to lose more. But more than that single measure, I like what I can do with body that I haven't been able to for decades. My skin feels better on me. My legs can carry me farther and faster that I would have thought possible a year ago, and my only desire to lose weight now is so that I can become faster. I've regained a strength and stamina I thought I'd lost forever. I eat and sleep better, and drink hardly at all, not from prudishness but a sheer lack of desire.

The word I use to describe myself isn't "thin" but "healthy." What sense of what that word really meant has shifted. Suddenly, I find different words meeting and speaking to my body, and I find my body embracing them, changing in response to them. These new words have altered my sense of the relationship between this "self" and these muscles and bones and blood; the physical change has released new words on the page, including these.

Together, the body and the words have carved out a new spiritual space in which I'm trying to keep moving, to keep writing. Suddenly, more seems at stake, and sometimes I worry that (1) I'm becoming increasingly insufferable or (2) whatever sense I'm making isn't coming through to anyone else, including those I love most, or both. In this new vocabulary and space, I've come to think that that's what healthy means. It isn't weight or words but a coming together. The mystery is to discover what words will emerge next.

Getting There From Here

I have a theory (actually, many theories, but I'll talk about this one for now). This can be dangerous because I have a tendency to forget that my theories are just theories; I want to believe that the world(s) in my head and the world that parades itself before my senses are the identical, even though I know better. In other words, I start to think I understand far more than I actually do or ever will. Believing in something comes easily; knowing is a bit harder to achieve. But real understanding is that rarest and most elusive of mental states, the kind I only get glimpses of out of the corner of my eye for a few seconds every hundred years or so.

That said, according to my (still-only-a) theory, we are all pilgrims; we're all looking for someplace sacred. My theory says that most of us don't know how to find that destination, or don't know what the destination is, or don't even know we're on the road looking. We simply wander about where ever we've been placed, or we strike out purposefully in a direction but no matter how far we travel can never get a sense that we've arrived.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if my theory were correct?

It would explain so much, so much frustration, boredom, anger, distrust, ambition, desire, competitiveness in the eyes of the people I've encountered. In my own eyes in the mirror too.

When I think of someone's actions that make no sense to me--like mine--it helps me to imagine this person (to imagine myself) as lost,which is often what I am. When I become impatient with my children, so often it comes from a sense tha this place we inhabit emotionally, physically, spiritually is not the place we ought to be, not where we belong. If we could get there somehow, we would be different.

In that place, I wouldn't be afraid for my kids' futuere, I wouldn't wonder about the kind of men they'll turn out to be.
In that place, I wouldn't doubt that I can be the father they deserve and need.
In that place, I wouldn't cling to my failings whenever life doesn't turn out as I'd hoped.
In that place, my house and my income wouldn't be too small, or my belly too large.

I believe that place exists because I've been there: when my boys were babies and we ran in the park or I sang them to sleep; when I've hard the sound of the ocean crashing, beyond my sight in the darkness on the far side of the dunes; over and over with my wife when we're together, doing nothing at all. It's a place where everything is enough to be just what it is.

So I've found it, i just don't know how to stay there. But maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe the question is how to take it with me, how to wear it through the world. I have a feeling that when I really get there, it's going to look a lot like where I am now, but the one doing the looking won't be the same.

Stumbling Runner

My time was slower than I had hoped, I had an agonizing penultimate mile going uphill, and my calf muscles tightened so much I was hobbled the following day. To my surprise, my half marathon run last Sunday--my first race in 28 years--was a complete joy; equally surprising, I have struggled somewhat in the aftermath.

The run began in the 7 a.m. cool of overcast San Diego. Though the race announcer warned us that the day would "heat up," skies remained gray until mid-morning, well after my run was finished. Between jostling for position at the start, weaving among walkers, joggers, and other runners, I didn't have time to think much for the first four or five miles. In spots, knots of five to ten people had gathered to cheer us runners on. The course wound around the harbor, then rose precipitously to the entrance of and into Balboa Park. Climbing the hill between mile 11 and 12 was the only place where I struggled, but even that difficulty has faded into the pleasure I feel having completed the run. One of my great memories is seeing my wife's face as I neared the finish line; walking (or hobbling) around with her afterward, I was just so happy to be with her.

It may be the endorphins of "runner's high," or that insane flush some women feel as soon as they give birth to a child, but as soon as I was done I knew I wanted to plan for my next race; I knew I wanted to continue.

The hard part in the days since then has been returning to normal life.

I took Monday off well in advance, thinking I might need it to recover from the run, and I spent part of the day visiting people where I used the work, at the University. I enjoyed seeing friends I hadn't touched base with in more than a year, but I felt a combination of nostalgia and relief. I could see myself back in that setting, working with people I liked and admired, but I knew that my reasons for leaving hadn't changed. I knew it wouldn't be long before I would be frustrated again with the grading and the bureaucracy.

Still, the hours at my ordinary job feel sluggish somehow. It's as though the run, and the months of preparation upon which it was built, have opened something I can't yet name but also can't suppress. As though they've made a different kind of life seem possible, but that isn't clear enough (or too frightening) to step into.

I do know that writing is at the heart of the restlessness I'm feeling. I've started writing each day, my goal now, as when I began my running, simply to keep going bit by bit regularly each day, not concerned with quality but only with continuing exertion, only with building the habit of effort.

The run has shifted something in me, and now I want to see where it leads.

Still Here

I haven't hit the lottery, been hit by a car, joined the Foreign Legion, or come down with pneumonia.
I haven't received my long-awaited MacArthur Genius Grant or that massive advance from the publisher for my forthcoming bestseller or had the option on my screenplay picked up (in large part because I haven't written a screenplay).
I haven't won any long distance races--or short ones--though Sunday I'm going to run in my first race in more than 25 years (a half marathon) and I'm very nervous about it.
My children are still beautiful and brilliant and contentious and surly and loving. My wife is still everything I could ask for.
In short, nothing much has changed since I last posted anything to this blog. Through the running, I have confirmed to myself that I can stick with something, even if no one else (besides my wife) cares much whether I do it or not. Sometimes I find myself running quarter-mile intervals at 6 a.m. and I'm both proud that I'm out there without any prompting and puzzled that I'm bothering. But I've pushed myself through, and that's been the best part of running again.
My point of difficulty remains my writing (which accounts for the lack of new posts). It may be that I can only attend to one discipline at a time, but I hope that isn't so. I hope that what I've learned about engaging in what you love without expectation or ambition, with only the pleasure of doing it, will spill over now into my putting words on the page--or on the computer screen.
I'm starting slowly again, just as I did with the exercise. I literally walked in December, in the winter darkness of early mornings, before I jogged, slowly, then ran. Yesterday, I put in 12 miles which is more than I've gone in a single run since high school.
The trick for me is to let that lesson sink in, to let myself go slowly, very, very slowly. But however long it takes, I'm still here. I'm still at it.