The year I became a runner

With yet another year coming to an end, I've started to contemplate what it is I'll be doing in 2013. This is in all honest the first year I've set resolutions for myself that I've kept, and I'm ready to build on them. 

First, what I've accomplished this year.

1. Total weight loss: 30 pounds
2. Total mileage (to date): 300.6
3. Total races: 7 

2013 Goals:

Running

• Run 800 miles.
• Run sub 9 pace comfortably.
• Compete in 12 races (at least one half and one full marathon).

General Fitness

• Be able to do 25 unassisted push-ups and pull-ups.
• Conquer my fear of all things inversion in yoga. I will be able to do a full headstand dammit.

Hell, why not?

• Kick the GREs in the balls and apply to the big boys (Columbia, Stanford, and Harvard...I'm coming for you)
• Learn how to paint, finally.
• Write. Every-fucking-day. Even if it's one terrible excuse for a sentence. It's time to get published again. 
• Knock another country off the list.

Into the worm hole I go. 

The Head And The Heart - Down In The Valley (not the video)

#Truth

My, how time flies. 5 days come and gone.

I've fallen in love with this place.

But then again, what do you expect?

I'll always be a gypsy. 

In the Rebuilt Machinery of Our Hearts.

There are those days that bring me back to my writing. That - like running has become for me lately - remind me how much writing is apart of all this for me. 

I've forgotten, despite my many triumphs and personal achievements as of late, how amazing the world is. How individual we are as our own entity, and yet how connected we are as a species on a most scientifically organic level. 

It's been wonderful to visit Jules in New York. While she was in class, I decided to walk the 2 miles through the upper West side to St. Patrick's Cathedral off Madison and then up through Central Park to the Natural History museum. 

I can't definitively say if it was those two destinations that I went consecutively that spurred such a deliberate self-awareness or rather it being only a sudden realization only found while exploring a new city such as I am. Either way, I'm grateful.

Not long ago I was asking myself what the point of all this was. Why should I have to work so hard on such little pay only to have it immediately consumed by debt? What's the point in helping these children who have already been condemned to a blue colored death by their families? I can't say I discovered the answer to the more difficult of those questions. but I was instead reminded of the quiet delicacies that we are.

While sitting in mass, I watched as hundreds of people carefully shuffled through, speaking with their heads bowed toward one another in a silent respect to those awaiting communion. They would stop before each of Christ's stations in awe, light a candle and then grabbing for tangled coat sleeves, make their way out onto a congested 5th. 

The Priest all the while trying to deliver a sermon on the most profound theologists of our time. And while I admit that I myself was distracted by the splendor of the church and watching those non-practicers point out each architectural beauty, something caught me and I was pulled back in. While reading from the book of Peter, a story was delivered outlining the pursuit of a blind man who upon hearing Jesus pass through his village ask that he take pity and restore his sight. Something was said about how many times Jesus was asked, and how exactly, all there outlined carefully by Peter, but the point was this:

Without a perfect combination of faith and hope, the man wouldn't have been able to see again. 

Although I'm a highly spiritual woman, I haven't been a practicing Catholic in sometime if ever really. I don't attend mass regularly nor have I been to a proper confession since my first communion. But this struck me deeply. First because a man of faith wasn't putting all the glory of this supposed miracle on the shoulder of Jesus alone but instead gave some recognition to hope. It's undeniable that the old man had faith in Christ, but there also had to be a hope in humanity first before he could find the courage to call out to him as he passed by on his mule. Hope that the men whom he asked had told the truth, hope that Jesus would hear him as he shouted not once but three times into the crowd, hope that he would be chosen among all the sick and poor present.

This stuck with me, mulling the thought over carefully as I too pulled on my jacket, taking in the sweet smell of holy water as I braced for the wind coming in gusts now. I enjoyed myself in the park, walking off the path to hear the crunch of leaves beneath my boots. Allowing myself to get lost briefly before finding my way back by the sound of distant taxi horns. 

The Natural History Museum was packed as to be expected. I purchased my tickets, opting for a 3:00 planetarium show instead of the exhibit on bioluminescent creatures on the 4th floor. I meandered into the Asian persons wing and eventually down, through the North American creatures. Each stuffed thing a marvel  I wanted to press my face into the glass and let my eyes lose focus on the tufts of fur along the stomach of the Grizzlies. My phone alarm went off telling me the show was to start soon and I found my way to the planetarium, settling into somewhere among the 2nd row. 

I was exhausted by this point and happy to finally sit. I leaned back as the lights dimmed and the mother of pearl screen glowed bright with the skyline of New York. Journey to the Stars, my half-torn ticket stub read. It sounded interesting enough. I chuckled slightly as Whoopi Goldberg's voice boomed overhead, launching us from Earth into orbit among the Sun. 

Again, I was lost in the moment and tuned out our lively narrator, thinking of when I was 7 and announced to my parents over dinner that I was to become the greatest Astronomer who ever lived to what was asked, "why not become an Astronaut then?" (my reply? "It's too cold in space.") We swirled a moment, following the orbit tracks of each planet before shooting off to Orion's belt. I perked up again, interested to know what brought us here. 

I had known already that Orion's belt served as a nursery for new born stars. But how did the Universe begin at all? Enter mystical black matter and Hydrogen. As the Universe expanded and the first stars were formed growing too large to support themselves, they went off like ultra violent Super Novas, pushing their rejected existence into what would later become the many different solar systems, including the Milky Way. But without the first to come and the first to go, those other elements needed to create not only other stars and galaxies, but planets, especially those that can support life like ours or life itself, wouldn't have been possible.

So that's what it came down to. 

It's pretty easy to gather without the brilliance that is Whoopi Goldberg to know how rare we are in the grand scheme of things. That without the perfect amount of oxygen or our rotational placement among the other planets or that initial bang out in the middle of truly nothing, we wouldn't be here, throwing satellites back out into infinite darkness trying to find answers. And what did we discover? 

That we're made of stars. Those stars that started it all and died off left traces of themselves within us (about a teaspoon full) so that we could survive, reason, explore, grieve, hope and have faith. That we as individual and as a collective human race are made of stars. 

What a fucking phenomenal twist, isn't it? 

Gathering my belongings as the lights came on, drunk on the new knowledge gathered in those 30 minutes, I stumbled back to the North American hall and walked straight to the Grizzlies exhibit, pressed my face into the glass and let myself be lost in the brilliance of that fur because why not? 

Why not be in love with our faith and our hope and the stars that started it all? 

Iron and Wine - Boy With A Coin (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

So in love with this song and video for various reasons...

Solo

That cold has come again. The one from Prague that seems to have never really cleared up. I suspected it was here last week, but now I'm sure of it after having leaved over the sink for 10 minutes hacking away to remove whatever it is I can feel lurking in that pink fleshy void that link nose to throat. 

Whatever it is looks like lungs or brain. I'm sure it can't be good, but I have neither the time to take off work nor anything to keep a sample in until I can make it to the doctor aside from an old glass jam jar I washed out yesterday.

It hasn't stopped me entirely, this cold (if I can call it that). Although this is the time of year that I would start to burn out, and I am. Now the leisure of last minute planned activities will be replaced with more rigorous academic content. Play time, at least for us teachers, is over until after spring break in mid-April when at last we can pass comments over poorly brewed coffee in the staff lounge like

"the end is near!" and "we've almost done it, keep strong." 

I supposed part of me is excited for the change. With it comes centers meaning I'll get to take a step back and watch the kids blossom. We are here to make independent learners after all, right? It also means that winter months will soon fly by and those simple joys that came late to me last year will be soon upon us in 2013 - lest the world ends abruptly even before the new year.

I'm excited to see them plant seeds in our box if only to watch them peak outside the classroom door when they think I'm not paying attention in hopes of capturing any glimmer of movement beneath the soil. I'm excited for our "better" planned field trips to the Tech museum and, possibly, Academy of Sciences if Blythe can pull it off. We'll see. 

Soon. First we finish 2012, wrap up what lose ends we have going forward in the hopes we can blaze ahead lose ends free. Next Saturday I leave for New York to visit Jules, an impromptu trip I'm looking forward to very much. Any excuse to get out of Oakland and away for longer than an evening is much invited. 

I'm excited for snow. I'm excited for the time to read and write. I'm excited for good food. And, most importantly, I'm excited for the rest only a trip such as this can provide: no responsibilities, no demands, no schedule. Simply me and a brand new city.

Here's to the rest of this week....

When I grow up...

During Opening circle of class, I asked my students what they wanted to be when they grew up. After settling into our normal lopsided circle, I waited patiently for everyone to "think, think, think" about their answer before allowing each student to complete the sentence followed with a short explanation. 

Of course I expected the obvious: a princess, an astronaut, a race car driver. I smiled exuberantly with each response, coaxing a sentence more from each willing to produce it before moving on. After each had spoken, I stood and reached for the day's vocabulary before settling back into my spot on the rug when someone spoke up....

"But teacher, you never said what you wanted to be when you grow up."

In the moment I laughed and explained that I had already grown up and that I was a teacher. But looking back, maybe there was something to what was said. Something more than the pristine view of a six-year-old.

On the drive home I reflected on what I might have said. An astronomer, a volcanologist, a rescue diver...

Never a teacher.

Not that I should be ashamed to have become a teacher, I love what I do. I guess what hit me was more or less my inability to dream for the sake of dreaming. In some ways I haven't lost that talent totally, I don't think I would have come as far in running as I have if I didn't set some lofty goals. 

But those days of standing on the edge of consciousness while discovering a new planet, or fiddling with hot lava in some weird-o suit, or saving an entire crew from a capsized ship off the coast of Alaska are no more. I'm not sure if I could at that time realize those would never happen in this lifetime, but can I remember falling asleep to the idea of what I could do if given the chance. I was invincible! A beast among my wryly counterparts! 

A fearsome thing to behold behind my mane of tangled sun-bleached hair, face swept with the freckles of a thousand lazy summers spent in a tree. 

I was amazing.

So what happened? When did I lose enough faith in humanity to decide that it wasn't worth the hassle anymore, even if only for myself? 

Sitting in traffic, I wonder what I would have said if I had the chance to go back to that moment. 

Would I shout and stomp my feet and fight for the idea that we never grow up? Would I say a teacher, truly? Or would I say something more poignant? Something captivating? Something worthwhile? 

It seems I've forgotten what it means to live a life of any of those things for the time. But how I wish to practice anyhow.... 

Ray LaMontagne - For The Summer

And it begins

Tonight the rain comes.

A familiar voice once lost

to an endless rage.

And with it comes hope

for a renewed sense of self

having been displaced

among the wicked.

The cruel. The apathetic.

In exchange instead

an awakening.

A fierce knowledge of this earth

tethered by its grace.

Allow me then to

drink my fill of those waters

and be born again.

Have you ever asked yourself, what's the point? I supposed we all have in our own way, but at what place do we agree to walk away from all possible answers? 

At what place do we determine the true weight of what that is, the point of all of this? Our name, our job, where we live, what car we drive, where we graduated from.

Our worth. Our life.

I'm down to the last few pages of Egger's A Hologram for the King  and I've found myself asking that question from the moment I picked up the book and read it's sleeve. 

A man whose life is crumbling financially takes a career leap of faith and gets sent into an economic city on the rise in hopes to hit it big and pay off those debts inherited inevitably on the path to the best possible existence, including paying for his daughter's college tuition. Instead what he finds among chaos and uncertainty in the desert is that his life has, in many way, surmounted to nothing. And that his actions had not provided for him the judge of character he'd hoped to be remembered by. 

It isn't a happy story, anyone could gather that. But I was curious. My father had gone into Iraq as a civilian contractor for a year for the very same reason. His debt outweighed his gain and with myself in her last year of college and my sister just beginning, money had to be made.

I cannot begin to understand the trials my father underwent in those 12 months. As all things military and overseas, nothing is run by the books. Daily schedules are determined by how to avoid imminent death, something no one under those circumstances can avoid, including my father. 

Sure he returned with the money he'd been promised, but at what cost? 

I guess the book was in some way a chance to see through the looking glass he refused to let me know was there at all, and in a way I had anticipated it as it was: cloudy and painful. 

As children we can never truly know what goes through our parents mind, partly because they try and spare us those grueling details that wrack their very flesh at times, and partly because in many ways we can never full understand their intention, even when we become parents ourselves. 

So again begs the question, what's the point? Why bother?

Why fall in love with someone who has repeatedly told you they cannot give you what you want? Why mother children that very well may turn their backs to you, and if not, must endure watching you fall apart before them in some unholy way? Why try and save future generations that will be wiped out regardless of the vaccines we find or our ability to turn the rising oceans into something worthy of our insatiable thirst? Why write? Why run? 

Why try?

Maybe I've missed something along the way. Maybe the point is that there is no point, and that the beauty simply lies in existing: Breathing. Looking. Touching. Tasting. Smelling.

Listening. Always listening. 

Seeing the forest for the trees. 

Always giving the pedestrian the right of way. 

Taking a long drink after attempting to keep up with a 6-year-old on the monkey bars scorching hot from the noon sun. 

Lingering in the rain just to think you can in that moment feel your skin. 

Thinking, maybe, you still have a chance to be an astronaut. 

Telling someone you love them regardless of what the outcome will be. 

Knowing that in some way, your story is worth being told.

That what you do has some impact, forever. 

I want to find relief in knowing that I am not the only one who questions her place among us 7 billion. That maybe, within reason, I will be capable of accomplishing something that will out weight the notion that this is all for nothing. 

That we are more than fleeting bulbs of existence, flashing out with a subdued pop when our filaments have had their fill of this place.

I won't want to go until I first know someone read a book beneath my light that made them, if only for briefly, feel content. 

You see, because as much as I don't know what the point is, I also don't know if I've made a point either. 

Alone, I wonder if I, too, am an Alan. Finding that my meaning has become obscured and calls for an excavation. That mine is a meaning elusive like a steam of water hundreds of feet below the surface and that calls for a bucket to be dropped to its placid waves so that I may drink and remember. 

To taste it would mean to remember, and how I want nothing more than to remember. 

But standing at the edge of the opening, bucket in hand, the last of the day's light bounding over my shoulder in an act of defiance, I find that my rope won't reach. So instead the bucket's uneven bottom skims the water's lips, throwing it into far reaching ripples that carry for a moment before disappearing all together. 

Mrs Jynx - My Friend T3 (Remix Of Resynthesize)

And I, I feel so alive....

When I first started this journey, I never thought I would've reached this point: 200 miles.

But a couple of runs a week, turned into running every morning before work.

What took me 45 minutes to do then takes me 20 now. It isn't easier, I've become stronger, more in tune with my body than previously before.

I've started to train my mind to disregard the pain in my legs, the throbbing in my lower back, the cuts in between each toe threatening to open up and ruin yet another pair of socks. Two deep inhales in, two sharp breaths out. 

Hips square, land in the middle of the foot, rotate at the core, use your arms for momentum. Eyes forward. Listen to your heart.

Push. Push. Push.

I run for the release. I run for the thrill. I run for the challenge. I run for the peace. I run to stay fit. I run to feel alive.

I run because above all else, I am a runner. 

What dreams may come

There is a painting

Of yours above my bed.

I come home to you.

Here, I rest my head

In the silence of those hills.

So vast and light blue.

And that only you

Could capture in endless grace.

A crafted compass

That forever will

Lead me toward a time when

My love held some worth.

Derrick Brown - A Finger, Two Dots, then Me

Tribute.

I remember when I was in college, a professor once told me that things don't get easier as you get older. 

My mother tells me often that life isn't about the black and white, but instead about the (often times what feels like an infinite amount) shades of grey.

And so how am I here? At this intersection of having had made a decision I know was right but still difficult and so therefore doesn't feel all that right after all....

I wish sometimes I could look back at when I was 6-years-old and recall how it was I see adults. I wonder if I imagined myself at 25. I wonder if I fulfilled any of those silly dreams I had drawn within myself. I wonder if I'm a quarter of the woman I had hoped to become.

There are times in my day that I feel invincible. Untouchable. Perfect in my imperfection.

And then there are times that to simply exist as I am now seems impossible, as if the universe is poised and ready to tear me apart down to the very last molecule and the only peace I find is reverting back to a time when there was no church or God or political debates 

but rather concrete truths:

The soft folds of my fathers hands on the back of my neck as he carried me to bed.

Taking refuge in a laundry basket full of freshly washed towels still warm out of the dryer.

Swimming the length of our pool on a single breath.

A first snow. A first rain.

Crying into the tail of my mother's dress because she didn't have a napkin.

I wish I could go back and try again, make things right. Make myself better. But time is lost on me and instead I grasp those images as though my life depended on them.

Somehow it always will be.

To listen to Coltrane while cooking....

From the kitchen comes

the smell of cooking plantains.

My heart aches for home.

I think of her skin,

soft and spotted with old age.

Wise and filled with love.

To be with her now

would mean an endless quiet.

Life could make sense again.

Connections won and connections lost.

I feel like something out of Bridget Jones' diaries at the moment: home alone in my far-too-large-miss-matched pajamas, watching Pride and Prejudice, scarfing down my very odd version of comfort food (white rice and tuna...don't ask). All this minus the blonde hair, granny panties, and original Mr. Darcy, Colin Ferth of course. However Ms. Jones and I share one thing in common: a sense, at times overwhelming, of loneliness. 

I know at this moment regardless of my feeling sore from today's demands and my run around the lake, that I could change into something more appropriate (or not either for that matter), take up my keys and drive to one of many places where I could attempt that make that feeling dissipate. Maybe to a friend's house, or San Jose, or one of the many bars in which I'm taken care in Oakland. But tonight's feeling is choosing to be less superficial. And so here I am instead, watching poor Mr. Bingly make a complete bumbling fool of himself in the name of love while wishing I could be there instead. 

A time when people, myself included, didn't go around grasping their phones for fear they might miss a chirp and lose out on knowing in great detail what the majority of their social circle is up to on a typical evening, even when among them. A time when being well read wasn't a sign of introversion or an indication of intellectual stature, but instead of thirst for adventure and well being. A time when a handwritten sentiment was the only means of communication between persons outside of vis-a-vis as well a respected act of fanning the flames of desire between lovers near and far. 

Of course there was the whole no running water bit, divided class (like my brown ass would ever be allowed to paint tables and learn piano forte), lack of real medicine, and having to make pops pay a dowry if I wanted a man to put a ring on it...but are there not those same displeasures today if only  with a new name or intention? 

Don't be mistaken, I enjoy the many joys of the 21st century just as much as the next girl. I'm all about Instagram, girl scout cookies, my Nook, and the combustible engine when it strikes my fancy. But to say that those things that make our lives today enjoyable and comfortable don't come at a great cost is to live in complete denial. 

What I mean is that we've forgotten how to connect, even on the most organic level, with one another and our surroundings.

We don't give an honest handshake anymore or get up to greet someone. We fall in love online and break up via email. We eat food that's made by a machine (and often prefer it to the real stuff). We don't say thank you anymore. We refuse to drink tap water. We can't imagine sleeping outside or why anyone would do it for fun. We rarely call, but instead text.

And the result?

We have nervous break downs. We're overweight and depressed. We snap and move to the Alaskan brush only to be killed. We become recluses. We have trust issues. We're aggressive. 

But most of all, we're lonely. Really fucking lonely. 

I think the first time I felt this kind of lonely was in the 6th grade. My dad was stationed in Elizabeth City at the time, and we were living in one of my favorite houses we ever owned on Church street in downtown. It was summer time, and I was sitting on a patio my mom had fashioned to the right of the yard at the edge of our gravel driveway. Barefoot and in a pair of cutoff jean shorts, I twirled my now curling hair as I sat silently on a three way call with my two best friends who were arguing about whose tits had gotten bigger since the 5th grade when I suddenly burst into tears. I can't explain what triggered the sudden downpour exactly, but all I remember feeling was an immense and indescribable loneliness. Here I was talking with two girls who I had known since the 5th grade (a long time for a Military brat like myself, trust me) but who couldn't tell you the first thing about me: my middle name, my favorite color, my favorite book, what music I loved best...None of it. Partly because they were a pair of 12-year-olds who were self-absorbed like most and more concerned with their ever changing bodies than with my then internal bouts of anxiety (that manifested themselves later in severe depression and panic attacks), but also because we just never "clicked". 

I was already aware by then with the amount of moving around I'd done and would continue to do of what made a good friend just that, a good friend. I couldn't tell you what qualities I would later go on to recognize in who I now consider good friends that I needed in order to feel a true connection, but I did know that I didn't have it with any of mine. Case and point, those two bitches broke into my locker and read my journal aloud to the entire lunch room (not sparing any of the juicy details of my fantasies with my then crushes brought on my raging hormones). But then again, how I could expect them to understand? 

So for years I went it pretty much solo. This isn't to say I didn't have friends then, but they weren't good friends. Sure they knew who I was sleeping with and who I hated and who I was incredibly envious of for the most part, but they didn't know who I wanted to be, what I loved most, what my dreams were, what I wanted to accomplish. And that isn't to say I didn't try, but again, the connection - whether because I entered the lives of these people so late that it couldn't be done, or because maybe even I didn't know myself well enough then to expect anyone else to, or because I just wasn't meant to - was never there. I didn't make my first good friend until college, and I knew instantly upon meeting her that this was it, the gap between me and everyone else had grown that much smaller. 

Since graduating college and upon entering the real world I haven't gathered many more, but those I do have are appreciated more than I believe they realize. 

The connection with each is unique in his or her own way. In some, it's an underlying foundation so similar that we cannot help but feel linked in morals, passions, and fears. In others, it's an understanding of the gypsy life that being in a military family requires. And still yet in others, it is more based in love. A love so pristine and unfathomable, it refuses to be denied. 

I have kept most of my good friends as those connections, despite years of separation or major life changes, forever keep us tethered to one another. But for others through actions of my own or both parties involved, the connection is purposely severed and lost, never truly to be regained despite the best of efforts during moments of clarity and forgiveness. It instead becomes the boy backpacking across the states on his way to Alaska, excited about the future but unable to properly address the wilderness or its misfortunes, instead dying in an desperate attempt to regain lost symbolic ground. 

Slightly morbid and possibly melodramatic, but on par. 

Sadly I feel the call of the wild rising up in that boy now itching to tie the shoes on his worn out boots that will carry him along the 66 and up along the Northwest Pacific trail if he chooses to go that route. Maybe that's where this loneliness lies. 

The tinder is set, the match struck. Now all that's left is to, well, make the connection. A connection to break a connection if you will. The works only something as sly and deceitful as painful poetic justice could be capable of. My heart rolls haphazardly in its cage at the realization, I shift my legs from right to left under the sheets and pray that I'm wrong. 

Now that Mr. Darcy has swooned Lizzy, I instead wish to live forever in a Robert Frost poem. To be a bender of birches, or at the very least one of the girls who throws her hair over her back to let it dry in the sun. Instead, I'll turn over in my loneliness and wait to watch the slow orange and pink glow of my inner eyelids as they pull me into a blazing deep sleep. 

Jason Mraz - I Won't Give Up [Official Music Video]

Take it slow

Even though this was a run I was really looking forward to, I was still doubting myself the night before. Not so much about the distance or my capability to complete the course, I've had multiple 5ks under my belt at this point in the game regardless of whether or not they've been competitive...but because I was going it alone. 

This is one of those things you're supposed to do in a group of your closest friends like Bay to Breakers, only less intoxicated and without the flying tortillas. But after multiple mass texts and no replies, I initially do what I do best: say "fuck it, I'm doing it anyway." So I ponied up the $60 bucks and watched the color run video on youtube like a gazillion times to get pumped. But the day before the race came and as I waited in line to get my package, I realized how lonely this might potentially be. 

An awkward conundrum of sorts I suppose.

I mean, part of the reason why I love to run is because of the solitude aspect of the sport. Of course you can always run in a group, but you can always just decide to go for a jog around the block a few times an hour after dinner if it strikes your fancy. Go it without music and just get taken away in the blurbs of passersby's conversations, the gasp of a city bus on its way down Lincoln, the dirty hum of neon lights flickering on overhead signaling yet another night in Oakland...

I run for many reasons, and being alone without need to explain is most certainly one of them. But like anyone, active or not, there are times that companionship in whatever it is you love to do is desired deeply. Enter awkward conundrum. 

Sure I could've signed up for a group needing an extra person, but being good ol' introverted me, I decided it was better to face my fellow 15,000 color runners alone than to try and make friends with some folks from Sacramento that I'd never again see in my life. Either way I was going to run this race. With a price tag that steep, who cares if I had to run it naked and backwards. I was fucking running it.

The day of the race itself was much like that of my race back in June. Cold, congested, and electric. I managed to weasel my way into the group of the second wave of runners while I stretched and smiled at my sister who had tagged along for moral support. The first wave was off and we walked to the starting line, anxious to see what the course had to offer. Behind me a family reunion chatted excitedly, a couple in their late 50s beside me took pictures of the ever growing crowd, the Davis girl's soccer team stood a few steps ahead in silence staring out to where the first wave had already disappeared around a corner. And suddenly, the count down began:

10, breathe. 
9, breathe,
8, breathe,
7, why the fuck am I doing this again?
6, because it's supposed to be fun, remember?
5, breathe,
4, yeah, but I'm alone. What loser does this kind of shit alone?
3, too late
2, breathe,
1.

I tried and failed to jockey for prime running real estate as I got caught up in the family reunion who had swarmed me like a bunch of middle-aged drunk bees. I broke free only to get tangled up in a women's running group all wearing matching tutus and knee-high socks. Frustrated I skirted along a brick side walk, seeing the first cloud of orange snaking its way along a line of closed shops. I picked up the pace only to put on the breaks abruptly as runners and walkers bottle necked waiting for their turn to twirl and scream through the splashes of paint heading for their still pristine white race shirts. 

A little girl and her mother held hands as they ran through, shielding their mouths as they giggled uncontrollably before circling around for another go. A flash of tutus broke the orange smog as the women runners from my wave danced beyond the sprays of paint rejoicing the first half mile as if it was the last. 

No, I wasn't with my mom or best friends. But dammit if I couldn't enjoy myself anyway.

The rest of the race was less of a race. I still kept a good pace to feel like I had tried, but it became less about time and more about using these 3.1 miles to get as dirty as possible. I tuned into the running itself, letting myself get lost my natural rhythm, singing along with Pandora in the background. The blue station signified the end of the race, the finish line just beyond the rows of volunteers waiting to have at those almost done with globs of color. I smiled wide, coming in fast as I jumped past, arms open wide, hoping for the best. I sprinted to the finish, Kalena breaking past the barrier to pace me the last 15 feet or so. 

I hadn't gone it completely alone. She patted my back, tails of pinks and yellows and greens trailing behind me like rainbow exhaust. 

Munching on granola bars, we watched as teams came in through the finish while the last wave of runners approached the starting line. In the distance, runners threw off grenades of paint, gyrating to some terrible DJ they'd bused over from who knows where. Even the grass was saturated with color. I was glad I did it, more so at that moment of rest than any other. 

On the way back to the car, Kalena told me how proud she was of me, squealing with laughter as paint transferred to her black sweater after hugging me and I knew she meant it. I was proud of me too. 

"Moon" Little People

I guess with age comes the responsibility of strength. To be strong not always for yourself, but certainly for others. And I've found that in recognizing the necessity of that strength, I've started to become not only jaded but calculated, especially in times of personal weakness. 


The idea of yet another move - this time a result of nothing that had to do with me - a hospital ridden father whose been lying to us about his deteriorating health, a birthday no one seemed to remember this year including Andrew, and the prospect of having to start work in only a short couple of weeks has leaving me anxious and struggling to find the positive in anything. 


I've lost the urge to run. Although I'll have my moments of desire to continue, to get better and develop into the athlete I've always dreamed of, a morning like this comes to and I'm stuck. I'm left only wanting to lay in bed all day and read. Turn off my phone and avoid both the outside world and myself as much as possible. These should be the days I push myself to get dressed and take even the shorter route, but I find nothing within myself. No will, no drive, no push. Nothing. 


I've tried so hard as of late to not have to rely on people. I'm not saying I'm attempting to become some recluse, but to want friends and to need them are complete different. But now, in these darker moments, I realize that I've lost the ability to be strong for myself having had to be strong for everyone else. 


Jaded and calculated. 


I asked my mom and sister to go ahead to the hospital without me so I could have an hour or so to run and work out. That was half an hour ago. Instead, I'm sitting at the computer with a bowl full of milk from my cereal. Still in my pajamas, holding no intention to go running. Maybe later when its cool and I can stop on the track to finally be alone. 

marc anthony - preciosa

#letsrunthis

Races I'd like to complete before the world blows up:


1. Run in Tilden Park 5K - Sept 18th 
2. Race to End Hunger and Homeless 5K - Oct 20th
3. Miles for Migraines 10K - Oct 28th
4. Embarcadero 10k - Nov 11th (dserunners.com)
5. North Face San Francisco Championship Half Marathon - Dec 2nd


Who's with me?

To war with oneself is a war to be lost.

While checking out at the grocery store today, my father and I both grabbed for the most recent Time simultaneously upon seeing its stark image: a shadowed solider performing what was most likely taps with the caption "One A day." 


I brushed past his hand and reached instead for some bullshit magazine with an unhappy Kardashian revealing how terrible her love life was while watching my father of the corner of his eye as he flipped through each glossy page of the article carefully, trying to decide if it was worth the $4.99 price tag. The woman at the check out, now done with our groceries, held out a wrinkled palm for the magazine which my father handed over. Curiosity won. 


The drive home, like most of our drives, was a quiet one. The two of us contemplating what we would read once we got home. After making lunch, my father announced he'd be taking his normal afternoon nap in which I saw my opportunity to take a cold glass of sweet tea and settle into one of the many rocking chairs on the porch with this solider of ours. 


Following the death of my dad's youngest sister in January, it was decided that an impromptu family reunion was in order. At first I was excited at the prospect of meeting my father's family that he had left behind after purchasing a one way greyhound ticket shortly after his 18th birthday and that he refused to let into our lives. He instead watched quietly as my siblings and I embraced out Puerto Rican heritage, ignoring my father's lineage completely aside from our last name. But as the months passed and the time for the reunion was upon us, I had a change of heart: why now? Why under these circumstances did we feel it acceptable to meet people who shared our name but nothing else. I had never even been to Cleveland, nor did I have any desire to. Yet here I was, on a redeye flight out of Oakland and still a 6 hour drive out from the Outer Banks, on my way to this family reunion. 


On the way down, I asked my father all I could. There wasn't to be nearly as many people there as we had at first anticipated, so I simply focused on the aunts and cousins who would be present for our short stay. All together it would be dad, the three of us, my aunt Donna and Kim, and our second cousin Tony (son of my Grandpa Dom's brother, Tony) and his two daughters, Anna and Dania. Chris, my father's other sister, had recently fallen back into another Heroine stint and wouldn't be around to make it. 


More than anything, I wasn't sure how to accept these people.


When we arrived, my aunt Kim was the first to greet us. I was the most excited to see her (since the last time I had was when I was 7), but because I knew that like my Titi Dulci on my mother's side, she was the keeper of records, photographs, birth and death certificates, stories, legends, myths, and truths. She held the answers I needed and that I would hopefully find during these few days together. She hugged my father first, kissing him gently to avoid transplanting any lipstick to skin and then approached me next. I hesitated momentarily, letting my eyes drop to the crab grass riddled lawn until I felt her arms around me. She was much shorter, her face resting on my exposed clavicle until I relaxed and returned the embrace. I'm not sure how long we stood there holding one another, but in only a few moments, years of distance were suddenly erased and we knew we could move forward. 


Over the next 4 days, we spent hours exchanging information. I hadn't before thought of my father's side of the family's perspective in regard to the distance placed between us. I admitted I had believed them to be indifferent, possibly even borderline insulted, at having never heard from us during that time. But Kim shook her head, her neat A-line cut tossed from cheek to cheek in earnest disagreement. She, too, had left at an early age when she found her out and understood my father's reasoning and dilemma perfectly: he wanted to escape years of pain and never look back again. And he had succeeded. He put himself through school, became a successful officer the Coast Guard, married my mother, had the three of us, and went about his life as if his childhood had never happened. 


I asked her who he had been before he had been our father. She smiled sadly, staring into her glass of wine. She said that he had always been an avid reader, that he loved animals, was a complete sci-fi nerd, and did well by everyone. He worked hard even if he hated what he had to do, and never complained to anyone. He had always been one to keep to himself, even from a young age, and kept a somewhat calloused perspective of life given his circumstances growing up. 


Where my mother has always been an open book, my father has been tight-lipped about his life, sharing only the occasional tid-bit following a few drinks or a moment of clarity. I hadn't before that moment knew very much of my father aside from what he allowed us to see growing up and tried with all my strength to absorb that information into my very bones. And I realized in that moment that it wasn't my father's intention for us to never know, but rather for him to never have to remember. 


Later that evening after Kim had gone to bed, I pulled out an old email my father had sent me while he was stationed in Iraq in 2008. He hadn't told us that he had contemplated taking the job until the paper work was finished, his physical exams all completed, and a plane ticket purchased. At this point my father had been retired from the Coast Guard for a few years, passed over in 2005 after it was clear he wouldn't make admiral, and had become a civilian contractor for the Army. With my brother struggling to find work, me in my last year of college, my sister just starting out on her own and a failing mortgage, I'm sure my father felt obligated to take the offer to do some contract work overseas.


Caught up in the midst of trying to graduate on time and write a thesis I was proud of while also being emotionally and financially supportive of a severely depressed brother and sister, I didn't reach out to my father much. Of course I had no idea the danger he would put himself in daily as he omitted information often to keep us from worrying. A technique I practiced myself for the same reasons, never relaying information of Marco's abrupt disappearances following a fight with his then girlfriend or Kalena's on going talks of suicide. I thought I was protecting him if I pretended to be happy, to show how grateful I was for his love and support. In reality I suffered from multiple panic attacks, calling my mother at all hours of the night in hopes to find some peace myself, afraid that I wouldn't be able to finish at all let alone time. 


It was during an all night editing session that I received an email from my father explaining why he had given me my name: Mariel. I sat at my computer, re-reading the email's contents repeatedly trying to find some hidden message. Why send this now, I thought to myself. 


Don't be misunderstood. My father has always shown his love for us. But as we grew older, me more rebellious and cold, the affection exchanged between my father and I became rare and forced at times. It wasn't until I was out of the house and 3,000 miles away that I had realized my mistake, but by then the damage was done. Too much time had passed, making the two of us unsure of how to cover lost ground. So, naturally, the email - albeit incredibly kind and welcomed - was also equally off-putting. I responded immediately not wanting him to believe I had brushed off the gesture, proclaiming it to be a great honor to have been named by him and that I would carry that with me for the rest of my life. 


I found out some years later that my father should've been killed the night I received his explanation during a routine check of some facilities which he bypassed to complete a report. The humvee carrying his coworkers and solider transporters hit a land mine, killing all on impact. I can't imagine the devastation my father felt, nor the survivor's guilt that followed and continued to haunt him as PTSD. I'm not sure if it was that incident alone as there were many that ignited a desire to reach out to the three of us, to determine his worth and in the process regain a sense of purpose, nor am I sure if I helped him to fulfill that need as a daughter. I'm still not sure, I will always be too afraid to ask. 


A few months later, the five of us reconnected in California for my graduation. My father, who had always been a clean cut man, wearing a shaggy beard in some attempt to hide his face. My father, who had always been quiet, now only a few steps shy of being a mute. My father, who had always been my example of strength, now became startled at a plastic bag floating out from behind a car when crossing the street. Eyes shifting constantly, body never able to rest. He had been changed in some irreversible way and I couldn't fix it. No one could. 


Despite his best efforts, my parents lost their house in Florida. My dad left Michael Baker in Arizona and took up a job in Winchester where my mother would transfer to so the two could be together again. After years now of living apart, they had their chance to begin again, and not without struggle. I saw the marriage tearing at the seams, my mother working to patch up each new tear as deftly as possible, but not without some mistakes. My father was a regular at the VA, constantly changing prescriptions for the pain and images that now wracked him night and day. At times I was afraid to be in the same room as him for fear he might revert, falling into a fit of sobs or worse a blind rage in which we were all to blame for what he had suffered from. I would rather be away from him and hold fast to those images I had of him as a child, carefree and happy, then to stand by his side and watch as he unfolded before our eyes only to become nothing but a desolate and lost old man. 


Eventually the fits subsided and my parents found their footing. I was grateful to return to phone conversations about the weather and how the Indians were playing. Life for us would never be normal, not by any standards, but it was close enough. 


While visiting over Christmas, I woke early to find my father pacing around the kitchen, looking confused. When I asked him if he was OK, he simply stared at me. It was 6:30 in the morning and not able to sleep, I thought I'd make coffee and read for awhile before everyone was up. After a few minutes of a silent stand off, my father eventually shook himself awake and mumbled a good morning. He was looking for his car keys, he had an appointment at the VA to get some blood work done. I offered to drive him and keep him company, which he agreed to. I remembered thinking how beautiful the Shenandoah mountains looked in fresh snow as we drove through sipping on our still steaming coffee. At the VA, we flipped through dilapidated pamphlets on health care, eavesdropping on the Vietnam Vets exchanging stories of the bush. I smiled at him as he walked back, not sure if I should ask if he wanted me there with him or not. 


Later on the drive home, he asked to stop by McDonalds for breakfast. "I remember when you were little, you were obsessed with the pancakes from this place. Not anymore, now you're too good for this sorta shit." He chuckled, taking a bit of his sandwich. 


The drive home took longer with more drivers on the road, unconfident of their technique with the slick black ice. I bit my lip, watching the road carefully. We had grown quiet in my concentration, my father sitting back straight against his seat with his eyes closed. When we were through the worst of it, I sighed with relief and resumed a normal pace, patting my dad on the arm to let him know he could relax. 


"Do you still need me?" He asked suddenly, his hazel eyes shining fiercely from behind his bottle cap glasses. 




"What?" 


"Nevermind." He knew I had heard and understood. 


"No, what do you mean? Why would you think I don't need you?" I felt my heart catch in my throat. Was this because I didn't offer to go back with him when they took his blood? Fuck. I should've asked. 


"I need to hear you say it. I need to know that you still want me here." 


My eyes switched rapidly between his gaze and the road ahead as I tried to make contact.


"Yes. Yes, I still need you here. I'll always want you here." 


He sat back, his head against the rest, eyes closed. We didn't say anything again of the conversation, nor did he ever ask again. A conversation I've tried hard to not over analyze until after finishing the article today. 


I had believed that with pills and therapy, he would overcome Iraq and what he had been subjected to there. But trauma like chronic pain never truly goes away. It gets better with treatment and practice, but can and will sneak up at any given moment of weakness, ready to strip you of what character you have left. I'm grateful that although he never truly expressed his desire to give up to me, he did to someone. And unlike the men who succeeded in ending their misery themselves because of lack of compassion and treatment, my father was able to move forward and continue to fight. 


I'm not sure what the future holds for him as I will never know what my father wants for himself, or for the millions of others who suffer daily. Those with the invisible scars. Each of us needs a purpose, each of us need to be needed. But first the desire to continue must be present, ending the war with oneself. As he wakes from his nap, stumbling into the kitchen half blind without his glasses hoping there's some coffee left in the pot from this morning I wonder where within this he stands and if he's still on the front lines of that place I can never reach. 

THE COLOR RUN - Be a Color Runner

Sac, here I come! So fucking stoked for this one.