The Agony and the Ecstacy: Running and Writing

Say Yes - Elliott Smith

2010-07-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

Things started to go wrong early.

I couldn't sleep. Too excited. Too scared. Too many feelings to have for sleeping. Also, I have a cough. I never get sick. I'm from that hearty kind of Eastern European Jewess stock, thick thighs and thicker lungs. I'm like a goat. I eat anything. I stay up too long. I just keep going. And just in time, my newly functional right ass cheek was sore from being used for the first time, apparently, in years. The good news is that the physical therapy is sending me into the land of good health. The bad news is that it's happening on Marathon Day. Some days you get up and you hit the road and everything feels like a movie. A nice movie in which you are the hero, a gorgeous, muscley, raven-haired hero, each stride a poem of triumph. And that, of course, was not how I woke up for race day.

Me and Ginger made it downtown before dawn, the streets teeming with runners. Every kind of piece of humanity you ever saw. Who are the 25,000 people lining up before the sun to do this strange thing? Some people have done it literally hundreds of times. Some of these folks run 26 miles ONCE A WEEK. There's plenty of folks there like me, nervous and unsure they can make it, knowing the clock is not an issue, that the streets will be closed up on them and the sidewalks will be their red carpets of quiet glamor, the kind of personal glamor called sticking it out.

I can't believe I even make it to the starting line. There is some dj-ish dude saying kind of dumb things, at some point letting us, the last wave, know that he's saved us a special song to send us on our way. Tony Bennet. Tony Fucking Bennet. Does that say, Eye of the Tiger to you? The runners display an array of facial expressions as the piano beginnings of I Left My Heart In San Francisco swell. I can spot confusion, humor, irritation, disappointment, and just plain rage. What a tool. Turns out he's made a mistake anyhow, and we get one more song. It's my jam. Journey. My eyes pool with tears immediately.

I'm at the starting line of a goddamn marathon. That first week in December I ran one mile. Just one. And somehow, for months I tacked on hundreds more, never really enjoying it, playing out a battle with my body, my self esteem, my guts. I found ways to meditate, to grow more honest with myself, with my life. I slowly inched toward appreciation of my body, the places it took me, the ways in which it provided me such joy staring wild-eyed across my city having scaled an actual mountain. It brought me to understand despair in new ways, to imagine the loneliness of a falling body to the bay, it brought me new pain that led me to ask for help. The body brought my mind to doctors and to therapists that are helping me to piece back together the damage I've quietly done over years of neglect and misuse. It taught me to see pain as a message and a clue, a big show of sensation and nerve endings, a fireworks display of what's bearable, and what's not going to work. The starting line. I made it. I already won. All except the pesky 26.2 miles ahead. It's feels both life assuring for me to begin this last journey, and totally unimportant at the same time. It feels like getting here has been my tale, that arriving is the actual answer.

And also, like I said, I know already that it's not going to be pretty.

I take off down the road in the sausage outfit, tears rolling down my face. It's foggy. It's damp. Off to my left I see Ginger for the first time, joined by my friend Grant who rode his bike down to see me off on my journey. Seeing friends will eventually save me, as it always has. My mind won't settle, my right side feels strange, and while the left heel isn't screaming, it's weighing in its constant dull protest.

I make it over the huge hill up to the Golden Gate and immediately a woman coming towards me trips and goes down hard, face first, into the road bed. Her ponytail jerks left as her face hits the cement and her long elegant fingers reach helplessly for her careening iphone. It's kind of weird, really, the iphone. But that's what I see, in slow motion really, limbs and fingers and electronics. And it makes the worst sound, her body going down so hard. I feel like it should be louder, like a sound engineer should have jacked it up like for a film, but it's pretty quiet, the air leaving the body, a small smack of skin on road. A groan. The pack keeps me moving, along with shock and fear as she scrambles up again, I think.

I can't get out of my own way in my mind, six miles in and all my counting tactics are failing. I stay calm. I stay kind. I know things are coming apart. I get to the other side and finally have a chance to pee. I will not regale you with the horror that is the bathroom over there, or the band that would be thrown from a bar mitzvah by a mob of livid semites. They are both equally soul crushing. But not nearly as bad as the feeling that washes over me as I pass the 8 mile mark on the bridge. I see the eight, my lucky number and my right hip just seizes. The whole right side of my body follows and I dig my thumb into it. I dig until something opens enough to let it keep moving, my six hour finish time dissolving on the bridge. I cannot make it like this. Eight miles is usually when I begin to feel good on a long run. Strong and immortal. Slow but capable. But on race day, mile eight is where things are clearly not going to improve.

By the time I make it over the Presidio hill, past Baker Beach, across more hills in Sea Cliff to the avenues, the cops are beginning to pull up the cones and let traffic through. I am still surrounded by a good sized hunk of runners, but the marathon has a contract with the city and cars need to be moving. I understand, but it's kind of a harsh toke for the old spirit. Maybe it's good, I tell myself, to be on the sidewalk like in real life. Just another run. Just another day.

Golden Gate Park is upon us and my chunk of humanity heads in. Almost everyone, it turns out, is doing the half marathon and right about three hours into this, they retire and I am nearly alone in the park. Even the bison look depressed. My body is over it. I think about cheating. Not as an option so much, but that the possibility exists. That I could. Except I actually can't. Can't live with it. The sign up to the Presidio Hill had a quote from Confucius that said, It does not matter how slowly you go, Only that you do not stop. And so I got right with that way back there, I could go slow. I could take seven and a half hours, and I might. But I would finish.

The race has been flanked with volunteers decked out in biker leather and pins blanketing the vests, like bad ass Scouts. They dot the side of the route in safety orange hats, reclining easily on their gargantuan Harleys. Northern California bikers that came down to volunteer, help with traffic. Heading into mile 16, I see a trio of them off to my right talking to a person in Levi's and Vans. I see curls kicking out from under a paperboy hat, arms gesturing toward a piece of paper.

Sam. Sam!!!

She turns and comes toward me, arms thrown into a huge welcome, no care in the world for my sweaty body.

Sam it's horrible. It hurts so much. Everything is wrong. My right side won't move. My heel is killing me. My lower back is so tired. It's awful. I feel like shit.

She laughs. She laughs more.

Yeah. Yeah.

She is beaming. She is so happy. She wears happiness across her face like a finish line.

You just ran 16 miles. Of course you feel awful. It's terrible. Nothing is making me feel better than you right now. I love it. You're just doing it. I'm an athlete and I don't want to do this. But you are. You're just doing it. You're having a bad day and you're doing it anyhow.

We walk. We walk fast but we walk. I am sobbing, telling her my fears. I am afraid my friends and family will think less of me in my bad performance. I am afraid the pain will rob me of my work. I am afraid to feel humiliated, to see people who had come out to cheer for me, standing and waiting too long. I am taking too long.

The bikers said people are collapsing. You're not. You look great. You look strong. Look, there's Mr. Blue Heron. He came out to cheer you on. And the hawks are out.

We basically proceed to have a nature walk in which Sam tells me about the animals and the trees in the park. The park goes on for fucking ever. I tell her when we finish Stow Lake, I need to head out on my own. I'm afraid I won't be able to run anymore at all. But I wantch Sam go, and then my legs pick it up. I run. I walk. I run.

As I'm just about to the 18th mile a pair of bicyclists pass me, The man is saying

Oh these are just the stragglers.

Unimpressed, she says,

How long does it take the average person to run a marathon?

And all the love my heart has recaptured, all the courage and willingness turns catty. I feel scarlet rise. And I think,

Honkey, please.

Average people don't run marathons

at all.

And I may be a straggler,

but I am not

Just a Straggler.

I emerge from the park fired up, running dow Haight Street. First just to get out of there as soon as possible, and second, because I hate those people. Those biking mean people. I see my friend Eric on the road. He'd been watching for me. He is also beaming, unconcerned with my slow going. The bottom of the hill welcomes mile 20, and my first crew of cheering dykes. A knot of women going nuts with a french bulldog puppy. I am so happy to see them. I realize I've kind of felt happy the whole time. Even in fear and in discomfort, I've felt happy.

By this time my heel has upped the ante of its protest from dull to insistent. The skin feels stretched over the bones and as if a small tack is living in there, a mean thing from an elementary school prank. Every step it pricks and yelps. And yet, I feel elated. My people are so amazing, out there in the cold waiting for me. Waiting as long as it takes.

Mile 21 brings another pack of folks, these ones wearing letters that spell out my name. Team Seinberg scrambles to get in the right order and stretch across the road stopping traffic. They go nuts. They go so nuts when they see me that even the people waiting outside a cafe for brunch across the street go nuts too. They even take off and run with me for a block. Because at this point, I am actually still running. I run almost the whole way to Mile 22 where my friends have again built an outpost, lining a corner to cheer for me.

By now we're all crying really. I am so happy. I am so drowned in endorphins and pain. And I think they are happy too. My time is pathetic and nobody cares. Even my pregnant friend has made it her business to haul it out to the course and cheer. I kiss her and her belly. Ginger pulls her truck into a spot after almost getting in an accident to catch up and I almost collapse into her.

You look great babe! You're doing so great. I love you. You can do it. You're almost there!

Everyone keeps yelling that I'm almost there. Which is true and also seems like a joke. A bad joke. But I love a bad joke. I have four miles to go and they seem impossible. But I go.

I stop to get water at Mile 23, where a questionable gentleman offers to take my hand in marriage for the third time of the day. Questionable gentleman apparently find me irresistable. So that's something.

At Mile 24 I am by myself entirely, in the industrial backlands of San Francisco by the water on long 3rd Street right before you get to the ballpark. I see the sign for the 24th mile and I just burst out laughing. It feels so good. My heart feels so full. So enormous, I could love the entire world. I could love BP and the West Bank and the Bush empire. I could love that douche Glenn Beck and his lover Sean Hannity. I could love everything I fear and laugh along as they wish me death. I feel amazing. And my body feels destroyed. But at Mile 24, I finally know, I am going to finish a goddamn marathon. My watch has passed six hours, but not by much.

I round the ballpark and spit my little carcass into the Embarcadero. I can find almost no signs that a Marathon has been run here. Cups have been swept up, cones are all but a memory on the road, crowds are dispersed and there's no water anywhere. In the distance I can see a bald man coming toward me in the sun that has finally peeked out. I check his gait over and over.

Is that?

Is that my brother?

It is!!! Steve Seinberg walks toward me and I walk toward him. My running has been reduced to very limited hunks of 64 strides at a time. My brother!!!! He's seen it all. I just want to sob. I want to dance. I want to hit something. But I don't think I can lift my arms.

We walk together and he ushers me to my mom. She's crying. I'm crying. We cry, me and my mom. We're cryers. My mom. I have never had anything hurt so much that feels so good. At the 26 mile mark I tell Steve

OK. I'm gonna run this bitch.

And I do. I pick up my ruined thighs, I beg my aching ankle full of brand new pains and my poor heel to just soldier on for two small tenths of a mile and they do. They even let me sprint the last few steps over the finish where my dad is beaming. Dad!!!

And that's how it went. It was kind of horrible. I had the worst day of running I've yet had, probably. And the best day of spirit. And I think that's exactly how it was supposed to go for me. I was supposed to just learn that it doesn't have to be perfect. It can be messy and ugly and blundering. You can hurt and groan and make weird faces. There can be bad photos of you and still, your friends will cheer wildly in the cold, your parents will weep with love, your brother will adore you and Ginger will take you home and run you your first of several ice baths. And hours later you will limp to your front door and find Coach Cadwallader there, an enormous bouquet of sunflowers in her arms for you, telling you Congratulations. You did it.

6:32:41.

I came in 5907th out of 5980.

And that's just fine. I couldn't be happier, truly.
After months of saying no to everything,
I am ready for the Era of Yes.
Thank you for running with me.
Thank you for
Helping me be a better writer
and a better person.

Thank you for everything.

Love from a former marathon runner,

Sara Elise.

I Try - Macy Gray

2010-07-25T04:45:00.000-07:00

People don't love Rocky because he won. They love him because even though everyone knew Apollo Creed was better, he still tried. He gave it everything. And then after he gave it everything, he dug for more. And so here I go, slathered in silicone lube, bejeweled with rainbow sweatbands, and armed with so so so much love from people. I am off to try. And then dig for more.

ADRIENNE!!!

The Long and Winding Road - The Beatles

2010-07-24T08:31:00.000-07:00

24 hours from now I will be one hour into the marathon . I'll be jogging slowly up the steepest hill of the race at that point, climbing up up up over Crissy Field to the Golden Gate Bridge. It's such a painful grind getting up there, and such a payoff when you do. San Francisco splays itself out, off to your right like a gorgeous lover on a bed, exhausted from how beautiful everything is. She sports the golden dome of the Palace of Fine Arts winking up, promising you that when all this is over, art will still win. Through budget cuts and sarcasm, through depressions and earthquakes and war, through snarky detractors and through each and every hurdle, art will hurl its golden dome up into the world, proclaiming its resilience and its freedom. Its unquenchable spirit for survival. It has always been here, and here it will stay, not just proving the faith people have even in the most treacherous depths of despair, but also providing it for those still here. People will always paint and sculpt and write and photograph and film and perform and dance and draw and sing. Humanity is built to be moved and to move each other. And straight from the heart of New Jersey, we were also Born to Run.

Today I don't do any training. I am done. Finished. Complete in that way. I tied a big bow on my work with a brand new route last night down Ocean Avenue in my new neighborhood and back home, ending at my front door. I collapsed on the couch, my head spinning, pouring sweat from my hairline, just three little miles into the thing. About one eighth of the distance. The thing about the little runs is there is no time to settle down. To settle in. To make peace with the project at hand. I spent the last run too excited about Sunday, but what's a girl to do? It will be impossible to understand what I am about to do until there I am. I do not understand what it's like to be with so many people. I have done this, the road part, alone. I don't understand what it is to be witnessed, so slow and awkward next to gazelles. To see my friends, my family, my brother and my parents along side the road, cheering for me in a state of pain and destabilization. To see my beloved Ginger, a heavy camera on her neck, electric albatross capturing all of it as I lumber around such a pretty place, doing the best I can, which promises to be just as painful to watch. I will surely see her and I will feel that familiar excitement about having her back, having my time back, having long lazy days in the yard with her, gardening, reading, all the time laughing. But the race will have me so very stripped down, and already I can feel the nakedness of being seen doing a thing I am not good at. I am not a person with talent in this area, and that's finally, finally, ok. Not comfortable, but ok.

This whole pilgrimage into the world of the marathon has been so much more profound than I could have imagined. And I don't think I knew I would stick with it after that first mile. I don't think I knew I'd stick with it until today, I guess. How can you know? But here, on my last day before the ribbon, are some things I learned.

1. People are full of love. They want to help and they want you to succeed. Let them be your wave when you are adrift. Let them carry you when you feel exhausted. Your strength will return, and you will get your legs under you again.

2. You are capable of anything your mind conjures. Your mind is not only your strongest villain, but your most ferocious ally. It will be your guide to everything your life is offering you. And if you let it move aside, it will be a most gracious ambassador to your heart.

3. Strangers are just like you. When you tell your story, they will hear it, and they will recognize themselves, and they will rise up and share theirs too. Or they will nod at you and you will know. Or they will quietly relate. Or they will never say a word, never once make a motion toward you, but you will have connected and they will take that seed into the world and plant it and other strangers will quietly walk by in the night and water it. And we will have made a forest.

4. Pain is a dull word that stands in for a billion sensations. Just like love. And the two cannot exist without each other, and that's just fine.

5. Your story matters. Your efforts matter. And if that is fiercely true, then it is also true for all the people you run by every day, even the ones who make vile noises at you and stupid comments. It is true for the people we fear and the people we reject. Everyone's story has to matter. No one was born an asshole. Even the ones who eventually arrive there in such a blaze of glory. And so it matter, at the very least, to honor the grain of truth that humanity is a collection of stories and each one is a little bit what shapes you too. Yes, even that asshole over there whose ass you just kicked. I'm not trying to tell you what to do here, or not to be mad or outraged or disgusted or frantically filled with loathing in any given moment. But that too, is part of your story.

6. In one of my favorite poems, Mary Oliver says,

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting"

She's right.

7. When you think you absolutely have to quit, you don't.

8. When you least expect it, that's when the quitting clobbers you.

9. It is rewarding to live in the body. And here I am speaking directly to women. Do not let the media rob you of your gorgeous body. Your disabled body or your rotund body or your scarred body or your struggling body or your damaged body. This is your home. Do not let the weeds run amuck in the yard or the cobwebs to overtake the corners. This is your instrument of life, you best and most treasured gift, the home of your mind and your heart. To tend them, you must enjoy the home. Stretch. Walk. Dance. Move your arms. Blink. Smell things. Eat what nurtures you. Make an alliance with thing the world would have you turn against and be silent with. I began my first mile truly disgusted with the jiggle and thunk of my heft. Today I am able to thank it, to honor it and be myself. This thing has carried me further than I ever would have imagined, to lovely sights and gorgeous places. I have had the honor of being its student. I never thought I could love a home so imperfect, but it's mine and I do.

10. Tell your story. It's yours and no one can ever take it. Raise your voice. Trust that someone is dying to hear it.

Love,

Sara Elise.

Wild Horses - The Rolling Stones

2010-07-22T20:37:00.000-07:00

Gus is so sick of my shit. Very early on I took him with me on a run, and neither one of us liked it very much. I like to run alone and he likes to run fast. Since his company offers me no solitude and the leash offers him no freedom, well, what was left to do but part ways? Then he had his knee surgery. That was so terrible, remember? His stoned handsome face, stranded there on the floor, full of regret that none of his jobs were being done. No chews were being chewed, no sticks were being chased, and most importantly, no house was being protected. Now he just waits for me to find some damn time for him. As soon as he sees me change into the sausage outfit, his hopeful tail retreats to a sag and his gaze hits the floor. He trudges off to his bed, walks around and around in circles until it's to his liking, then he plops down with the cutest, most guilt inducing groan you ever did hear. As if to say,

Bitch,

what have you done for me

lately?

I am doing my best to not look forward to after Sunday. And even with my best, lassoing my cantering mind and hauling it back to the present, I can't help but watch it take off on it's way. It tried to make a tattoo appointment for Monday, a small application of ink that would land on the open pages on the book tattoo I got on the last Sister Spit tour in Olympia, Washington. A ruby sparkles from the open pages on one side, and on the other a fancy "26.2" will face the gem. But my pal Sam can't make it happen monday. So my brain turned to some other reward for the day. And my most relaxing massage therapist doesn't work Mondays. There's not much money left to shop for house things, I already went to the spa this week, so I really have no idea what to do with myself. Maybe I won't be able to move.

I also like to pack the backpack for after the run in my imagination. Ginger will bring it to me for when I'm done. There will be 3 cans of my favorite organic coconut juice in there, some raw almond butter in a little pouch I can rip open and squeeze out, a dry sweatshirt from Pratt in Brooklyn that I got with my Dad when he took me there and showed me the classrooms where he learned about engineering 50 years ago, and maybe some sweats to pull on.

I can't stop thinking about any of it, truly. Gallop away mind: Saturdays will be open again, free to roam the world with my hot southern butch, explore the new show at the SF MOMA, go camping for the first time this season, hit estate sales, and cook all the recipes I've been saving up for. I will see my friends again, go back to being a woman who is there for her beloved people, listening to their adventures and woes, their hopes, their big big plans for genius accomplishments. I'll be free to see the pregnant ladies, who've been growing whole new humans while I ran, a nostril at a time, laying in wait for the big wide world. I'll write all the thank you notes I owe people, join the gym and go play tennis, swim, kick things really hard, and go on reasonable length runs. Turns out I really like a 6-8 mile outing. And finally, I'll get back to the beach with Gus. Oh, Gussy, run to the salt water! You'll look downright majestic.

And I can write my book.

It's really incredible how much support I've gotten to do this thing. How many folks have just been pure buoyancy for me when I thought I'd sink. But to tell you the truth, I've been trying to write this novel for so much longer. It takes more sustained energy and it happens in the dark corners of aloneness. I find it nearly impossible. It makes the marathon look like a prep course. Writing a book, at least for me, is such a fantastic struggle and such a constant ache. It's a heavy thing to carry around undrawn ideas, to wait for stories to unfold, to coax them and try and find the quiet to listen for answers. The characters set up their little yurts in your mind, squatters in the realm of your imagination begging to be real. Little Pinocchios wanting a shot at the big time. And today, I have to say there's not much payoff waiting. The publishing industry is shredded to tatters, a Stevie Nicks costume of a thing, and on top of that, the presses that do survive are not interested in a book like my book. Magazines are much the same. The ones that might actually pay a bit for me to be a real writer who writes as a job, well, they don't find my voice in line with what they want. I'm a little messy. A little uncouth. And more than a little bit gay. I know gay goes a lot further than it used to, but still, look around. It's too unfulfilling to write in a different style for pay, although I could. But I guess I'd rather just work at Rainbow Grocery, being myself. And yet the book, it demands to be written, and like the marathon, it teaches me in the struggle to do it justice, that I become a better version of myself if I go out there and meet it on the page. Do its bidding because I seem to be here for that reason. Not because it'll ever "pay off". Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be a writer and a photographer as my main life purpose, but regardless, I just keep writing anyhow. For free. Alone. With friends. Paid readings. Quiet poems. Unedited blogs. The words just come. And it's my job to allow that.

So the thing is that all this time while you have been supporting my run, my hundreds of miles into being a new woman, you have mostly been supporting my spirit to write my story. My Pandora in New York. My Icarus. My Prometheus and Hera. And because of all this help, I know they are going to make it.

And hopefully on Sunday

So will I.

So much Love,

Sara Elise

Don't Crash the Car Tonight - Mary's Danish

2010-07-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

I have been laboring under the delusion that while Ginger vacationed with her family back home in the South, surely to return to me with a thicker accent and the languid pace one acquires from doing stretches of time in humidity, that I would be welcoming her into my loving arms housed in a cottage brimming with the proof of diligent efforts. No. I have spent the week in a pretty constant state of panic and paralysis. Until yesterday, when I believe I returned to a sane state of mind. Course, I'm open to going a little nuts again, because as it turns out, sometimes the mind just does what it does.

Ok, mind.
Do your thang, freak.
No parking on the dance floor.

After many butt flexes and core crunches with Kevin, and after the good Dr. Greene cracked the feet, the ankles, the hips, the back, the neck, and everyone seemed to magically dig into terribly tights muscle points, I found myself wrapped in a foot centric ice burrito pulsing with electricity. My torso sported a sleeveless Van Halen t-shirt lifted from Ginger who acquired it on another one of her visits home, each stop at the Wal*Mart producing some kind of enviable rocker shirt. Last time was an AC/DC one I am still plotting to overthrow. A recent phone conversation revealed this trip will provide our happy household with a Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt for Ginger to grace the Robinberg land with. Simple Man. What a great song. Why did Freebird get so famous, when Simple Man simply kicks its ass?

Anyhow there I am, in the Van Halen shirt and these oversized borrowed shorts from the clinic because I forgot my stetchy exercise pants. Not capris. I hate capris. In fact I even hate the word capri, unless someone is telling me I have won a vacation to an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The shorts are kind of like scrubs but with elastic instead of a drawstring. and they are enormous on me. Huge. I look a little like a vertically challenged person. I also notice it's already time to shave my legs again. The upkeep is dizzying. So I'm just laying there alone. Looking a little bit unfashionable, as usual these days, and not really caring. Thinking.

I've pretty much come to the place where I've done all the work I can do. I either did enough, or I didn't. I will either make it, or I won't. Dr. Greene says the only job I have left is to enjoy the run. Laurian tells me when things feel like a wall or I can't possibly make it one more step, I just have to melt more. She told me this in terms of childbirth, and if women can make it through that, I can make it around San Francisco. And when I get a message from my friend Sarah in NYC, she tells me I have already won everything. I have taken back my body as the amazing system it is. I have run hundreds of miles I never thought I'd be able to run. And I have an opportunity to run around one of the world's most beautiful cities to do one singular thing that's just mine. Just a stretch and burn, a pyre of all the fictions I ever constructed about the things I was unable to accomplish. My legs are the kindling and my heart is the match. And my friends, along with acquaintances who have cheered me through everything, are the oxygen that let the fire grow.

Upon returning home, I unpack the mailbox containing the new issue of Better Homes and Gardens that the former tenants have not had forwarded yet. A bonus. A nice red envelope from Netflix for me and Gus. We watch Valentine's Day. And a package from Julie, who has become my biggest cheerleader.

I lived with Julie in college through the bong years. Although I don't remember her participating in the bong action itself. The problem with the bong is that it impedes my memory of much of anything. Anyhow, I lived on Trigo in Isla Vista, CA with Julie, Christy, and Rachel. Julie and I knew each other the least. And after we lived together, we didn't see each other for about 18 years. We still haven't seen each other. In the mean time, she collected herself a nice husband, amazing looking children, and a running habit. She's got more experience than me, she's faster and more consistent. It's so inspiring. Even with that whole family, she still kills it out there on the road. And makes time to be right here with me, sending me encouragement almost daily. Yesterday it arrived in the form of an envelope addressed to Sara "I Can Run Hella Far" Seinberg. Partly because in college me and Rach said Hella about everything, especially when we'd work our eyes to a crimson place, exhaling plumes of smoke about the apartment and blasting Mary's Danish while our heads bobbed.

This weed is hella strong.
I know, right? It's giving me munchies already. Do we have snacks?
We have hella snacks.
Awesome. Can you get 'em?
No. Dude. I can't really move.
Julie?
JULIE!!!
We're hella hungry. Can you bring us chips?

And partly because it's actually true. I can run hella far. Inside the envelope is a packet of bath salts and one of the nicest notes a girl could ever get from an old friend explaining the necklace. It's a chain with a singular silver bead on it. A cube. A block. Sara's Block, she named it. She tells me it can be a stumbling block or writer's block or whatever. It could be pain or laziness or a bad attitude. But whatever it is, the necklace is about how no matter what difficulty arises, the best way around the block, like the necklace, is through it. I light all the candles in the bathroom and climb into my Julie sponsored arnica bath. My fingers go to the necklace over and over. It is like she sent me ruby slippers. My race day just got a little bit better. My sausage outfit now includes the necklace Julie made me, the earrings my mom gave me, and the rainbow wristbands Christy Schaefer is bestowing upon me.

I finally feel a little peace. My parents are flying in tonight to cheer me on. Ginger gets home too. Friends are making plans to dot the city with good will and screaming for me. I actually took Monday off work. I kind of feel like the luckiest girl on the block. Even with stubble and in a sausage outfit.

Love,
Sara Elise.

Black Coffee in Bed - Squeeze

2010-07-20T20:36:00.000-07:00

I'm drinking coffee too late, 7:42 pm, because I want to write this blog and I have still not gone out to do my 5k for the day. That's me. Non-stop Action Jackson. Lifestyles of the Cute and Geriatric Acting. That's my jam. Try and keep it cute. Green with envy is not your color.

Speaking of which, I wonder if I will vomit on Sunday. I know that during my 20 mile jaunt, complete with a large swath of walking in the middle, I felt waves of potential upchuck quite a few times. Surprisingly, I accepted these feelings at the time out of complete exhaustion, and the knowledge that I have, for sure, barfed many, MANY times in life leading up to those moments for much stupider reasons, also self-induced. Today I checked out 34 page digital Runner's Guide I got in my inbox to find out where all the Aid Stations are. Some of the highlights: all 12 stations include water, electrolyte drink by some corporation that's gonna make a ton of money on this thing, and medical staff, which I find both comforting, and doom-inducing. Do a lot of people need medical attention? What kind of medical attention? Am I going to perish? Can I save myself the humiliation of not being able to finish by feigning an injury? A twisted ankle? Severe dehydration? Dislocated hip? The dreaded foot?

No.
No.
No.

It's the coffee talking. And while we're on the topic of coffee, let me be clear right now: In spite of the fact that I do, for whatever reason, feel willing to vomit at some point with little or no embarrassment, I will not, under any circumstances, be shitting in my pants in honor of such a momentous occasion. I don't care how epic it makes the story. I just don't want to. I don't want to crap in my pants, nor do I want to just take a pitstop and drop trou on the side of the road for a dump. I am not going to win, nor do I plan on being so driven that I will lose my faculties. Also, I plan to rise at 3:30 am to make sure there is plenty of time for all that to go ahead and ease on down the road before I even hit the pavement. So there is no reason for me to enter the annals of history, and I imagine you'll pardon the noun choice there, as an obscure Jewish lesbian who shit her pants for no reason at all. There will be no Radiolab episode in which I am celebrated or eviscerated. No one will do an expose on the extreme lengths I went to. I plan to just be an average lady, doing a somewhat insane thing, stopping demurely by a Port-o-Jane and retaining the dignity of her bowels for the duration. Thanks for asking. And frankly, I am dumbfounded by how many people have asked.

My brain is a colander. I can retain exactly nothing anyone tells me or asks me. I feel agitated. I am anxiety filled and emotional. I am scared, small, pre-emptively apologetic, scattered and excited. The marathon is in 5 days. How did I become a person who even knows that fact, let alone a person who has to go pick up their number and their timing chip at an Expo on Saturday?

5 days.
I feel nuts.

How about another disjointed thought?
Great.

My physical therapist friend Kevin suggested I do a plank pose for thirty seconds before I set out on my training runs. Then a plank on each side. Each of these to be followed by some calf stretches to help my weird foot. I know it seems strange, or it did to me, that doing a yoga pose before running would help, but I have found that getting my stomach muscles engaged and firing before setting out, changes what are usually a dreadful first 2-4 miles. These exercises have helped my body feel stronger, faster. I like that. Although, it doesn't make me warm to the idea of yoga any.

And: tangent!

You know what I want to do? I want to re-join the gym when this is over and do water aerobics again. Noodles for everyone! I did it once with my friend Ali and it was so gaddamn fun. This lady stalked the edge of the pool with her whistle like a drill sergeant, blowing the thing up while all the gray hair bobbed in the pool. Gray hair, Ali's butch crew cut, and me. Those old dames really live it up, I tell you.

Gear shift!

I can't wait to be forty. Fuck Old as Sucky. Fuck an age hating America. Fuck you America for putting women out to pasture so damn early. Fuck your impossible standards and your dumb ideas about the godhead of youth. I mean youth is great. Sure. Awesome. But forty? Shit, I been waiting 39 years for this. I always thought that when I hit forty, I finally had a shot at being really sexy. Like so damn foxy and so in my own skin and gray hair and wrinkly smile lines and freckles turned to age spots that I could walk in the world with my musculature all straight and tidy. I don't know why I waited to take care of myself until now, but that's just how it went. So be it. And forty's just right down the block and I feel like my power is waiting right there for me, all dressed up and ready to spin me around life like a goddamn prom queen. Or a gas station attendant. Because I wanted to be both. And now I am.

Ok.
Here I go.
Out into the fog and the wind.
Almost there.
To the starting line.
I feel grateful to be here at all
and more grateful still
to have my awkward gait
to carry me to grace.

Love,
Sara Elise

As Is - Yes Alexander

2010-07-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

Good Morning, Uterus!

I can't tell you how happy I am to see your sloughing today. All week I've been dreading the inconsistency of the red wave, knowing my hormones have been gathering in diabolical meetings, plotting an overthrow of my Sunday marathon. I believe I have a tiny bit of PTSD from the half marathon where y'all decided to commence a week before your "scheduled" arrival. Setting out in the rain that day, trudging all those hills amid a blanket of fog with cramps to top it off? No fun. So there's one fear off my back.

Yesterday was my last long training run before the race. It was slow going, although, turns out it was the day before I got my period so that makes sense. The good thing about it was that every hurdle from this entire process showed up, and I kept going.

Foot pain.
Check.
"I can't" brain.
Check.
Chaffing.
Check.
Too many layers.
Check.
Dehydration.
Check.
Hip spasm.
Check.
Weird hecklers.
Check.
(I KNOW. Running hecklers. Assholes.)
Knee pain.
Check.
Intense Panic.
Check.
Boring anxiety.
Check.
Body loathing.
Check.

It's funny how 8 1/2 miles became a short run in my mind. Oh I only have to run 8 1/2 miles today, says the weird delusional woman, as though she is walking to the post office. I forgot that 8 1/2 miles is a long fucking way to run. 26.2 miles is an INSANE amount to run. I have gotten lost in a bizarre perspective here. Only Eight Miles. That's not even useful in real life. But here, here in One Week Until The Race Land, that's exactly what's going on. I finish my run and think, Next week I'll still have almost 18 more of those to go. Actually at first I think 15 because I am so tired, I can't do remedial math. I am then treated to an Izee's Grapefruit soda by my friend Jenny Tender who has met me at the Ferry Building. She goes to give me a hug and is immediately grossed out by the soaking wet shirt. Who can blame her? I'm gross.

Anyhow, back to the run. Let's call it Promenade with Demons. The length of the course was mentally and emotionally like a medley of hit songs, a mash-up of flashbacks or a montage. But instead of seeing things or hearing them like in songs, I felt them. The realm of the physical began with the heel as it always does. I focus on how my left heel is never going to make it. How the thing is just a surface of green and purple bruised meat and every step is pound pound pound. I also notice by mile two that I have adjusted to the feeling and it's irritating, but totally bearable. I also know that mile 15 is a whole different story when the dogs bark louder, the hips begin to give out taking the brunt of the weak heel pressure. The lower back snarls its protest, and my mind, at the helm, attempts to assuage the pain of all parties, including itself. Mile 15. Still 11 after that. And then .2.

You can see how the anxiety enters. If I feel pain and doubt at mile 4, at mile 8, and begin a limp at 15, how do I rise above? How do I, a mere couch potato in a sausage outfit masquerading as an extreme person, continue to put the one foot in front of that other foot? Somehow yesterday's shorter version of this crisis brought me some hints. I hit reset on my brain a lot. I had to corral the thing into the present moment, do body scans to see how really, I was ok. Sludgy and uncomfortable, but ok. I had to pull back from all the mind's failure fantasies, my friends gathered at the sidelines as I walked by them, the sobbing sausage. I pictured Gus, and how in an open field, he runs away, free and happy tearing at full tilt to some invisible outer edge, then pulls his sleek muscled body around in a wide circle, herding me to him, and then off in the sun and the wind again. That's like my mind. It's just doing the thing it is born to do. It's thinking. It gallops away because it can, because that is the design of the spaghetti thing in there, it stretches and bends and projects. It's doing its job. Then I go get it and ask it, like Gus, Sit. Stay. Take in the sights. Count to 8. Then 16. Then 24. 32. 40. 48. Just get to 88 and then you can go away again. But the mind doesn't listen. It does it's thing, and at 64, I forget where I am and start over. I got nothin' but time, right?

Sometimes instead of counting numbers, I'll feel an urge to give up and instead I will catalog all the people who didn't. I start with Caster Semenya. Beautiful Caster Semenya. I work my way through a photo montage from my friend Rose Hill, a performance artist I met in school who fought cancer for a third of her life to Dr. King. I think about Michelle and those stacks of papers she totes to a cafe in her fabulous Jeremy Scott bag. The books don't write themselves. I see Harvey Milk and sometimes even those monks on fire in the streets of Beijing. I watch my brain conjure Dr. Hawking and Ashley from The Biggest Loser. She didn't quit. There's the drummer from Def Leppard who didn't quit, there's Helen Keller who didn't quit, there's Renee Richards, Muhammad Ali, Marina Abramović, Bernice Johnson Reagon, and Ellen. If they didn't quit their whole lives, I can make it 8 more steps. 16. A mile. Four. Build it.

But it's been so difficult to get to a place of peace. I've been there so I know there's a path to it, but the closer I get to race day, the more elusive that calm feeling is. The place I need to find where any outcome is okay. Where there is actually NO outcome at all, there is only the moment in which I step, and then step again. There is only the street and my sneakers and the sun. There is the sweat and there is my breath. The bridge. The city. This is my life right now. It is more and more difficult to arrive there for me, and I pray that along the 6 hour or more route, at my pace, I will find it again and again, because for this to really work, that's the peace. I will not win. There is no winning. There is only trying.

Yesterday my friend who studies in the Zen tradition reminded me that my inexperience with this process is a great gift. Shunryu Suzuki says In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's, there are few. And so it must follow that in the beginner's run, there are many possibilities, and one of them must be joy. And so I remind myself, on 3rd street out on the long stretch of desolate pebbles, that my race will contain attending moments of joy along the course, with the pain I am assured. I will have what I have, and while I cannot know, imagining only the struggle is well, horseshit. And wanting the race to be without pain or struggle is just dumb. Here I am, I have brought myself to the brink of a freefall, and I have made enough mistakes on this journey to not make them twice, and so, I will either find new mistakes, which are nothing if not interesting, or I will not. But regardless, I have made up my mind to try. It would be helpful to bring that spirit not to the entire race, but just to each step.

I am making an attempt to be kind to myself in this week leading up to the marathon. Ginger is out of town on a family/photo adventure along the Gulf Coast, safely distanced from my PMS/neurosis combo meal. Good for her, I say. I can't wait to see her pictures. I digress. I am here at the house with my friend Gus and neither of us talk at all. It's quiet here. I make lists. I need to because I cannot retain anything in my head.

Fold laundry.
Vacuum.
Get coffee thing for Sam.
Plan Birthday Party.
Write up Photo show opening.
Pay bills.
Sweep and Mop.
Pillow for couch.
Rug.
Fruit.
Vegetables.
Drink more water.
1/2 and 1/2.
Plan solo trip to Kabuki.
Get marathon shirt.

It's too much to have it all swimming around loose, a bunch of thoughts like twirling hippies at a Dead show. I need these things more tailored, some in smart suits if I'm get get a goddamn thing done at all. Ginger gets the 1/2 and 1/2. I had to have a latte this morning with milk for Christ's sake. The clothes are in the basket waiting to be folded and Gus walks around them each time looking at me saying with his eyes, Come on, just fold the damn things. It'll only take like 5 minutes. I need to keep things normal and also have something to look forward to.

Which reminds me... I got my marathon shirt! That's right. I went ahead and got myself a sleeveless running shirt for the big day. It meets all my needs besides branding. It's the right material. It doesn't have a flimsy "bra" built in that really stops being helpful after 3 miles, it's just a shell. It's mostly mesh so it's kinda like wearing nothing, but I don't have to actually run in just a jog bra, from which my ego would surely crumble. And it was on sale. So other than being not of the Adidas family, it's perfect.

And so the days wind down.
One week.

At least my period will be over.
Mazel Tov.

Love,
Sara Elise

Comfortably Numb-Pink Floyd

2010-07-15T06:18:00.000-07:00

I don't think my being a middle aged lesbian is the sole reason I like to retire around 9pm. This is America, and in America, we can go to bed whenever we damn well please. Plus maybe if you are lucky enough to have a j.o.b. in America, you might have to get up wicked early to make it there on time. Let's say 5am. Thereby putting you cradlebound by 9pm if you want to get the 8 hours of suggested slumber we hear so much about.

Sleeping 9-5,
what a way to be unconscious

What if Dolly Parton came over and sat there at the foot of my bed just tellin' stories and humming a tune so I would fall asleep? That would be nice.

Well, as you can see by my razor sharp wit here this morning, I did not get the required amount of sleep because I was not free to go for a run until 9pm. This is the latest I've ever gone out for a run. The first mile was kind of crap, and after that I really liked it. Even with heel barking.

There are ten days until the marathon. TEN DAYS!!! I feel nervous. I feel upset about the heel. I feel afraid I will not make it. It's been difficult for me to get back into my mindset of Hey, I'll just do my best and that's all I got. I showed up, I did the training, and the race is just some endpoint. The journey has already been the point. This state of mind, this calm, pink-auraed, open-hearted, accepting and peaceful state of mind has been an elusive little bastard running up on the end. The hormonal pandemonium isn't helping matters, and the five hours of sleep I got feels sorely lacking.

And speaking of sorely lacking... where are my Deep Thoughts? Where is the part where I remember beautiful things from my run to write about besides some painfully misguided man slurping kisses out the window of an old Malibu? When do I get back to the part, or forward, where I move through Golden Gate Park and relay all the things that I saw, following them up with historical oddities and lush anecdotal delights? Or what about regaling the keyboard with a play by play on the preparation for seeing the new gynecologist today, the public transportation trip clocking in at about one hour, making the departure time about 7am, hauling my uterus up to California Street for a palpation fiesta first thing this morning? Do I write about how my monthly bill has been a haphazard cornucopia of arrival times? How there have been high thread count disasters after all these years (although they have been met with my discovery later in life that a direct application of liquid non-chlorine bleach, composed primarily of hydrogen peroxide eats right through the red plague, setting the sheets free as if there had been no sanguine assault)? That the schedule of my red clotted friend has been an irritating fluctuation from 16-42 days since I took up this training, and my attitude has responded in kind? Do I write about how the bloating has arrived in full glory here at the ten day mark, the anxiety, the short tempered banshee like responses to anything at all, and the compulsive purchasing impulse as salve is squarely in place, with yesterday's purchases including an assortment of mismatched blue hued pulls for the cabinets in my office where presently boring white ceramic ones live, boring me to tears, and a set of delightful measuring spoons featuring accented in gold?

Please stick with me. We're almost done here.
Hello?
Hello?

Love,
Sara Elise

Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen

2010-07-14T07:02:00.000-07:00

I hate to immediately brag, but being an east coast Jewess, I will. Above you find a picture of the apparatus I slept in last night. I will be spending my slumbers in it until the race. Hot, right? Try not to spend your entire day in a fit of barely suppressed jealous rage. Make green the color of your ethic or your money, not your longing. To combat the overwhelming aura of sexual attractiveness the thing bestows upon me, I did finally get around to shaving my legs, cutting down on the vague depression haunting me about everything style oriented. It's surprising I didn't need to haul out the weed whacker. It's just been that kind of thing, where I remember to do a thing, and then when it comes time to do it, I don't remember what it is. I'll be accomplishing some weird task in the house, listening to Springsteen on repeat at a deafening level, and I'll get up and go to the living room for something. Then there I am in the living room, destination reached. I'm alone, looking around, Born to Run, but clearly not Born to Remember, with no idea what I'm doing there. It's been like that with the legs. I shower all the time, scrubbing off sweat and sloughing off the dead skin from unattractive job bra sunburns. But I'm all dopey in the shower, so I forget to drag the razor up my legs, or I feel too lazy, suddenly my status as a Yeti unimportant. Then I'll get to physical therapy and, for crying out loud, my shit is still staring back at me like a goddamn gorilla. So there's that to cheer about. The mowing of the legs.

Anyhow, the idea of the torture device is that at night, the foot relaxes and the fascia contracts, thereby causing more heel pain in the mornings and throughout the day. By lifting the toes slightly as I (try to) sleep, the foot stretches over the course of the night giving the foot some therapy even in a state of unconsciousness. Also, I had nightmares. And slept in weird yoga pants. Is this TMI? I don't even care anymore. I have PMS, my heel hurts like hell, and there's only 11 days until the race. Ginger is leaving for the heartbreaking, BP mutherfucker ruined Gulf Shores tonight. So at least I will have a week in the house alone, at my most annoying, anxiety ridden, neurotic and not have to afflict the valiant butch with my heel and housewares obsessions.

I ran yesterday, a quick two miles. It didn't feel good. More ice. Now if I could just ice my brain.

Love,

Sara Elise

Jump Around - House of Pain

2010-07-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

Maybe the heel pain is all psychosomatic. What if my mind is manufacturing the affliction so my story has a subplot? What if my sublimated drama queen is spending all my insurance money on an injury that is only real because I say so? With 12 days before the race, my anxiety is clearing itself up for me, shining its halo, and taking up residence in the frontal lobe.

Also, my heel still hurts.

Yesterday's session with Kevin was constructed entirely of hands-on treatment requiring no physical exertion on my part. My heel received ultrasound waves, intense direct pressure massage, electricity stimulation, chiropractic adjustments, and finally ice. The thing is getting more attention than Barbra Streisand at a bat mitzvah wearing some schmatta.

Love,
Sara Elise

Happy Birthday Mr. President - Marilyn Monroe

2010-07-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I got up early, made coffee in my new special mug, sat right down and started typing. No weird fucking around on Facebook, no Bejeweled Blitz, no online browsing for mid-century modern reading chairs. I was excited to write. I had so much news to report. I typed and typed, feeling like a nice hostess at a party, regardless of the fact that I have no idea who even comes to the party. I felt downright buoyant to have the opportunity to relay such a weird time in my life to people, my life as a stranger in a strange land. So I laid it all out, the week's events falling from my fingers like rain, easy and cool. When it came time for posting, time to attach the photograph to the header of the text, I clicked save to head, for just a moment, to a different browser window. Upon my return, one lonely paragraph waited for me, stood by me, while the rest of the text vanished. The carefully chosen links resided someplace in the intervapor, the metaphors escaped to the ether, and my heart sank, a battered galleon on the high seas of self-publishing. I sat dumbly, a quick journey to the state of Denial, clicking and reclicking different buttons thinking the words would return, a prodigal son on horseback. No such luck. So I stood up, and headed out the door in the sausage outfit. Now, before I get to that, let me try and re-piece my last few days together.

It's been a big big week here, winding down to the infamous starting pistol. Physical therapy has uncovered many things. So far I have been working with Kevin, a delightful Irish lad with seemingly no body fat. He has appreciated both my t-shirts (Sonic Youth and vintage Harley) which puts my aforementioned fragile ego at ease, especially when he has me do this thing: Nice, charming Kevin hands me two thick rubber bands. Not like oversized ones from a desk, but more like oversized, new fangled, non-stick massive bands for the hair. One is placed around the middle of my thighs, and one is placed mid-calf. I am then directed to stand behind a masking tape line in the middle of the rehab studio. The line faces an enormous mirror. The last time I stood in front of such a mirror I lived in New York City. The town was eating me alive with underemployment, heartbreak, and low self-esteem. I decided I should at least take some of my long standing sadness into my own hands and begin a journey to taking my life on a sunnier stroll. I attended a sliding scale dance class. I love dancing. Not like the New York, I'm A Dancer kind of dancing, but just some hot rump shakin', steam releasing, basic funky Blood of Abraham kind of movin' it around. It was a beginner class. African dance. Beginner. BEGINNER. I found myself in a room with about thirty people, all with some kind of command of their bodies. Smaller bodies than mine. I looked into the reflective mural and saw a hunk of humanity moving in time, a togetherness of intent and joy. And I saw myself, a beat slower, three sizes bigger, oafy and graceless on the outskirts of the picture. Within ten minutes, I left the room. It was all I could do to gather my things and depart before the tears erupted, the volcanic self-loathing so much deeper than I had ever imagined. Magma of humiliation and defeat ringing hot in my ears, my throat. That moment has been my teacher and my guide. I first learned to be kind to that girl sobbing in an old New York hallway, and then from there, well, a woman can accomplish anything, really. The mirror in the rehab room reflected a body also bigger than its companions, just as clutzy, but the head topping it off showcased a face full of humor and willingness. After accentuating the pear shaped nature of my vessel with the bands, Kevin had me stick my ass out and squat from the knees. I was to sashay sideways along the tape, never letting the tension in the bands release. Back and forth across the line, I watched in the mirror as the woman there awkwardly made her way. And finished.

Kevin assigned me a few more tasks having to do with squats and stretches, closely eyeing my movements, making tiny corrections that translated into enormous efforts in my body. Turns out, that at some point in these movements, my hips kind of collapse and give up. After some time with the movement study, Kevin takes me to a treatment table where he provides ART. A girl might be tricked into thinking this is some kind of wonderful massage, but really, it's torture in service to making an effort to create relief from longstanding compensations the body has made. In my case, it looks like the right glute, more commonly referred to as the ass, does not work so good. In fact, when isolated and asked to offer resistance to Kevin's pressure, the right side gives out as if it were made of tissue paper. The left side, on the other hand, performs more like a battalion of Marines. After all these years, it seems like my parents foreshadowing may finally have some grounds. I am literally, half-assed.

Kevin gives me homework. Dr. Greene cracks a bunch of things. My foot is still recovering from the long needle it had in it. But yesterday the schedule had 12 miles on it. And as you know, the show must go on.

The good news is, when I headed out on my run after my new exercises, bruises on my ass from the ART, and fueled up with some farm fresh eggs for breakfast, my body felt so strong. I had taken two days off from the shot in combination with my treatments and my stride felt downright athletic. I climbed the long Mission hill with no complaints in my mind at all. Everything felt long and ropey inside my limbs, easily prepared for battle with the road. My posture felt sure and my core engaged. Course, the bad news is, my left heel didn't feel ready for the pounding. Not twelve miles of it. Each step felt as though someone was tugging the skin around the outside of the foot into a nail. I decided that I would finish out the hour and return home, not risking pushing it too hard right here in the home stretch. I can elongate some milage during the week in response to this, but if I fall apart before the race, my heart will break. So like many people have urged me, I chose caution so I have the option to push when I must. I finished five miles in 55 minutes, sustaining an 11 minute pace for longer than I thought I could. The run felt exhilarating, even with the truncating decision. I actually loved it. Except when that dude passing in a car made a kissing noise at me. Attention nice men: the most disgusting thing you can do verbally to a passing lady is make a wet kissing noise at her. It's nauseating. And so briefly, I did have a murderous feeling flare up.

My fear is that I am like a contestant on American Idol that you root for in the early weeks. And that as the pressure mounts, as the deadline approaches, your contestant begins to doubt herself, make bad choices. One week she selects a Whitney Houston song showcasing her valleys where in fact there should be rare heights. The next week she picks our friend Celine Dion and you watch as she slowly unravels, Simon shaking his head while clutching his Coca Cola sippy cup. She forgets how to do her own thing, the thing that got her there in the first place, and in the face of a massive audience, loses her way, blinded by the light. I am afraid to run with 25,000 people. My friends and family flanking the race, watching me inch along in pain and blundering, bulky. I know I must constantly reinvest my stake in the process and not the destination, but it is what we are taught. Goals. Achievements. Accomplishments. Blue Ribbons, Finish Lines, and Gold Medals. I know the antidote to my fear is to believe in the singular step as the reward. And sometimes I can.

But mostly, I need help.

Which is why I want to tell you that this week has been an incredible windfall of encouragement. I have, out of the blue, received so very many letters and notes from people, kind and inspiring words that have kept me focused on the singular step, the jog toward a new peace, and also a huge thank you note to the woman who walked out of the dance class. Her courage to let her heart break provided me with a doorway to fuse the torched thing back together.

The race is two weeks from today.
Fourteen days.
Dos semanas.

It also feels like a good time to mention that the writers for this years RADAR Lab are heading off soon to toil away on their work. I can't say enough times, that as difficult as this marathon process has been, writing my novel has been around a million times harder. This race is to raise money to keep this program alive. The funding has been mostly cut. In the name of this marathon, please help keep writers writing.

http://www.firstgiving.com/saraseinberg

Love,
Sara Elise

PS... You'll note from my photograph that some curtains have been purchased for the new living room. Thanks for asking.

PSS... Happy Birthday Coach Cadwallader!!! Renaissance Butch.

Boredom - The Buzzcocks

2010-07-08T06:46:00.000-07:00

All I think about and talk about is the marathon. And finding the right curtains for the new house. I already scoured the internet to find the perfect labels for all the mason jars because now the little suckers are contained in a beautiful built-in, glass-fronted. So if you come one over, you'll see all the red lentils and hemp seeds and coconut flakes for yourself. It drove me crazy to have all the flours and legumes naked for the world. So off I went into the world of the internerd looking for some crafty person who had done a little more groundwork than I could manage. After that began the search for rugs. Rugs are expensive as hell. Rugs are waiting. But in a story of triumph, I did find a beautiful shower curtain. The thing has a subtle embroidered relief map on it of a fictional place. It has rivers and mountains and coordinates. It cost $118. I don't have $118 for a shower curtain. Or I guess I could, but right now my money is going to co-pays every time I get my feet taken care of, which adds the hell up. Plus, I just can't do it. Anyhow, the thing was on sale for Thirty American Dollars. I felt like I won something. I think I felt a little bit high. My Virgo cusp is showing.

But let's rewind... I am boring people to tears with all this talk about the run. It's nice here because if people come to visit the bloggy, which I know at least three people do, then that's what they are looking for. I fear in real life I have become like a parent with a new child. Blah Blah Blah. Baby Baby Baby. I love a life miracle as much as the next guy, and I am thrilled to visit with my friends' babies, but what else, people? There has to be the rest of your life besides the baby. Remember when you were a writer?

Well me neither.
I apologize, new parents. I see how it is when a thing just takes over.
My bouncing baby 26.2 miles and some curtains.

I went back and read this whole thing yesterday to see if I had told you of all my fears about becoming a boring person. I told you about the FOMO. I told you about my rumination on jumpers, about some juicy failures and about my friends Pandora and Icarus. That's all well and good. But also, here is some hard truth:

-I genrally go to bed around 9 and get up around 5 am.
-I haven't been out to a club for a few months, at all.
-When I am invited somewhere, I look at the time first, to see if it's an afternoon shindig.
-I have fantasies about housewares.
-I have no gossip to report, now that you all know Lilo is heading to the slammer. I hope she's going to be OK. It seems to me that jail is a scary place to have to face yourself. Anyplace really if you've been running for a long time, but jail? That's a super harsh toke.
-I got rid of the television.
-I love summer blockbusters. Real mainstream.
-I have no secret, or otherwise, crushes or intrigue. I just like Ginger.
-I also talk about my dog alot.

Do you see how this is playing out?

But re-reading the text also showed me how far I have traveled since December. It's so great. I love it. I can't wait to be forty. My forties promise to be the most relaxed, honest, courageous, sexiest, joyful, decade yet. I really have none of the traditional dread American women are fed about 40. None. I think part of it is seeing that I will always be doing new things and striving and learning. And so this is how I must combat the boring person thing. Plus, I'm not boring to me, so I suppose if a person thinks I'm as boring as my ego fears they might, they can put their big girl pants on and decide not to talk to me. Good for them. Life is too short for boring.

I have this adorable friend who tells me that they are often bored but never boring. I told him I firmly believe that is an actual impossibility. Bored people are boring. Always. There's like a billion things to do and see at every given moment. I guess that's how come the practice of running so slowly for five hours doesn't strike me as boring. There's always something new to find. I like that.

On the feet front, this morning I am off to my rehab and adjustments which will occur twice a week until the 25th. Yesterday the foot doctor decided my left foot had not yet improved quite enough to put the marathon milage on it and in a surprise and not boring move, plunged the cortisone needle into the thing again. There you have it.

Love,
Sara Elise.

Shine a Light - Wolf Parade

2010-07-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

Apparently there is a traditional training technique that seasoned athletes use in which a person builds their training up to a certain point before the Big Day, and then they taper off, saving the body energy and protecting it from injury before its finale. In my case, Coach Cadwallader had me scheduled to run 20 miles on Saturday, my longest outing before Marathon Day.

20 miles.

TWENTY MILES!

Now, for some reason, because 26.2 miles is a famous number, its actuality fades into cliche for me sometimes, like the distance of it or the real live meaning of it becomes a weird sound byte, an over there number, a fiction. But twenty, well, that just seemed fucking nuts. Crazy. And I don't mean that in a colloquial zany kind of way, but actually in a literal way. 20 miles. That's Crazy.

I made very sure to be fed and fueled, watered, outfitted in sunscreen, and committed before I left the house. I mapped my route, donned the sausage outfit with tank top option for the heat, and observed myself as the anxiety climbed. Ginger made me oatmeal with fresh white nectarine cut into it and a perfect cup of stovetop espresso. I showed her the route and told her it would take me around five hours. Plus I'd have to stop for traffic, water, peeing, what not. Also included would be the train ride to and from my start/end point at the Ferry Building.

So you won't be home until about four in the afternoon?

Or later.

Really?

Really.

I felt incredulous, too. I mean I don't do ANYTHING for five hours unless someone is paying me. It's like I was telling Ginger a fairy tale for breakfast. 20 miles. WTF.

I ran the first 15. By the time I got that far, my left heel was throbbing. My right hip was joining it. I felt truly like throwing up a few times. The journey had me on the back side of Golden Gate Park. I was making my way back toward Haight Street. I began to walk. To tell the truth, my running stride was so labored by then, I may have been walking faster than I'd been running. I walked for at least twenty minutes. Maybe twenty five. By the time I saw Stanyan at the end of the park, which featured wild blackberries for me, I wondered if I would just have to walk the last entire part all the way to the water.

Now, this thought would have been a tragic straw for a weak back in my recent past. But not that day. I didn't give a crap if I had to walk or crawl. Who the hell goes 20 miles on their feet? I mean it turns out a lot of people do, with the marathon entries capping around 25,000 for July 25th. But I mean really? It's a staggering amount of road. Then I got weirdly American about it in my light head. It was July 3rd, a pretty American day to get American. Trudging in the sausage outfit in the hot sun, my mind was flooded with pioneer images. People making their way across plains and mountains and rivers. Traveling on faith, getting sick, losing their loved ones to sunstroke, heart attacks, snake bites, allergic reactions and exhaustion. Dehydration took some, murder took others, drowning, exposure, grief. I had a paved path. water fountains. My loved ones safe at estate sales or in east bay offices. I thought about how people can do just about anything. In the American sense, that unfortunately included a massive and systematic racist elimination of people, and I thought about that too. About how I am afforded the chance at a weird victory that won't cost someone else something.

Anyhow, California is the product of folks doing a great deal of work to find it. The promise of adventure, a new life, gold. All of which I have been the inheritor of. Except the gold. Which I'm open to. (Speaking of gold, how are the 49ers going to move to Santa Clara and still be the 49ers? Maybe they can be the Silicone Chips or the Innovative Startup Companies. Goodbye, I say. Get out. We'll get a new team.) I decided to try running again when I hit Haight Street.

Is there anything worse than Haight Street on a sunny Saturday? Sure. But not as you run through it. I am now an avowed Haighter. I tried to be open to it. Tried to embrace the nice historical neighborhood from the Summer of Love. But like Blue Oyster Cult said, Things ain't like what they used to be, and This ain't the Summer of Love. It's horrible. And in its horror, it gave me the impetus to continue running. The faster the pace, the shorter the suffering of it. I ran on the street, hugging the cars on the right side of the road, as I couldn't fit on the sidewalk and people don't move at all. They just stare at your bad spandex fashion and walk right in front of you.

But then I was running again, off toward the water. Run. Walk. Run Walk. I almost quit at 8th Street, the BART sign seducing me with it's promise of cushy blue seating and a ride home. I actually stood at the top of the escalator about to descend the moving staircase to my chariot, when something pulled me back, sent me on my way of the last two miles.

Done.
20 miles.
4:50:26.

I may not finish the marathon in under six hours. Who knows? I have 3 weeks of physical therapy and adjustments to help me. Plenty of ice. And a growing cadre of people sending me the nicest, most encouraging messages. Maybe I'll come in under 6. But I can see the finish line. And it doesn't look like a fairy tale anymore.

Love,
Sara Elise

D.O.A. - Dead Moon

2010-07-03T09:19:00.000-07:00

It seems like no matter how many novelists you talk to about their process, every one of them will have a perspective and story totally unique to that person and that book. I mean I haven't talked to Charlaine Harris or Stephen King or Jackie Collins. So maybe people who are fantastically prolific have a kind of system that works for them. I suspect, however, this system involves choosing a writer's life and being able to sustain a constant practice. I have never read a Stephen King novel, but I did read his book On Writing. I picked the thing up because I was on a jag of reading all kinds of instructional/experiential books about writing at that moment: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (I love this book. It is funny, helpful, and in what I found unexpected, a deeply spiritual effort), Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings (I never read any of Welty's creative work, but this missive was a wonderful reading chair experience, chunky ideas to carry around), The Writing Life, by the always incredible, pensive, and fantastically brilliant Annie Dillard, and one of my personal favorites, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, who I had believed to be a woman until a first read in my early twenties. It is fascinating to me to follow along with a writer, talking about writing, as they are writing. It's so meta.

King seemed like a great person to read, as I had seen him in interviews and he kind of struck me as a dude I would want to have dinner with, barring my total and complete aversion to the entire horror genre of both books and movies. He was funny, he played in a band with Amy Tan, and rumor had it that he often checked into hotels under the pseudonym Joey Ramone. A regular cocaine addict in recovery. He said at one point that when he reread Cujo he found it upsetting that he couldn't remember writing enormous portions of the book because he was so ganked out on coke. I felt floored. Here I was wrestling with a novel for years, the same damn one, and he had pumped out so many, he didn't even remember writing one of em. The thing was, he felt sad. Like he had neglected a child and later found it suffering. Like he had, in his addiction, created evidence for his sober self of the future that he would catalog his own losses. Mr. King used this experience as a reminder to be present for the work. Other things he said that have stayed with me:

* Kill your Darlings This means that sometimes you have to eliminate passages you loved writing. Or passages you love reading. Because when you get to the meat of it, they don't support the book. The day I accepted I had to toss the first 75 pages of my novel in order to restart and write it in a sustainable way, I though about King. I was on Dolores Street running, sweating on a hill, knowing that if he could do it, a hundred million times, then I could do it once. It's been so much better since then, other than the fact that I still have less time than I would like.

*Write with the Door Closed. Edit with the Door Open. This one I haven't followed as much, and I find myself at a place where I'm ready to take it to heart. He says he barfs the whole first draft out without showing it to anyone or hearing anyone's opinion at all. Those opinions get in the way of the development of the book, and the roadblocks of the creative process are the property and struggle of the writer. Once the genesis is done, it's time to let the world in for the sculpting. I've been reading this weird blob to people for all the years the book has been struggling to life and I am finally at the point where I think I believe I can get this thing done, and get the help I need once it's on the page. But who knows? I've never done this.

*Don't Care Too Much What Other's Think. I am dismayed to tell you that this is the most difficult instruction for me to follow, in writing and in life. I, unfortunately, have a huge and fragile ego. A terrible combination, and my astrological fate. I care what my friends think, my family, whatever current nemesis I may be obsessing about, my lover, strangers. Everyone. This is a terrible disservice to both my work, and my sense of authenticity in the world. My mind realizes that trying to please everyone produces triumphantly boring work, and it also produces, in life, not just a mountain of resentments, but an entire mountain range. The Rockies. The Andes. In my heart of hearts, I want the courage to be myself, to write in my own voice that I have not begged, borrowed, or stolen from other people. I want the courage to let people think I'm an idiot, a bully, a show-off, and a bitch. I can be that for people. Whatever. It's none of my fucking business what other people think of me, or my work, really. Some people will read it, some people will hate it, seem won't even give it a glance. But the truth is, no matter what people think, I have continued to write no matter what. The best audience for work is the audience that chooses you. And the best companionship in life is the very same thing. Those folks that choose you. But at the end of the day, it's a really difficult instruction for me, not to care. I'm frankly just not that evolved. And at the same end of the same day, it's probably the instruction that will lead me to both my best work, and my best humanity.

Related to this, an author I know, and love, told me that their process for novels holds one similarity. They never map out an entire plot. They start with an idea about a story, and write down the avenue of that idea. They said one time they began a piece knowing the whole story, and the work was dead on the page. This writer found that knowing the outcome robbed them of the spontaneity and wonder of discovery as a creative force. I thought about this the day I forgot to eat before my run. And how the nice thing about being not being awesome at running and having all these setbacks, and even dealing with the obstacle of the pain my body is in, I have no idea what is going to happen. I don't know anything, which creates, as is traditional in plot structure, a certain tension in experience that excites the mind.

It also serves to remind me that the truth is that I actually never know what is going to happen. I live in an illusion that I can predict things. That the train will arrive when the schedule says it will. That all dogs bark and all birds soar. I wake up each day believing it is my right and my destiny to end up alive at the end of the day, rather than a gift. I don't want my life to be dead on the page. Or my book. Or my run.

So thank you, Stephen King, for these instructions of writing that turned out to be instructions on life. Maybe someday I will read Cujo and see what we both missed.

Love,
Sara Elise.

A Failure - Gucci Mane

2010-06-30T16:01:00.000-07:00

I didn't make it. I set out to go 15 miles, mapped a route, felt super excited. In fact, my heart was racing when I left the house. So much so, that looking back now, perhaps the racing heart was a bit of a red flag.

Let me star over. Today is my last Wednesday off until August so I was very excited to get everything in the whole world accomplished. Including much unpacking, catching up with all my internerd business and running 15 miles. The weather is gorgeous, my dog is happy, and my body feels very different with all this treatment. I brewed up a perfect cup of coffee, retrieved my mason jar of water from the fridge and set out to get everything done.

But I forgot to eat. On my way out the door I grabbed a nut bar thingy, hoping that would work out. After the first mile I wanted to hail a cab, which is often the case. I assumed the heightened desperation was a symptom of my disappointment having set out with the racing heart and the high hopes. By mile two, I was to the long steady incline up the back of Bernal Heights. HEIGHTS, people. It's a bit of a hill, but I sort of looked forward to getting though it. Sometimes after my body does a particularly difficult hunk of road, I feel invincible. Not today. I came down the hill feeling Very Strange. Wobbly. Heart still sprinting. By mile four, I noticed the pavement started to slant to the left, people seemed to be darting in front of me at every doorway, and I couldn't stay out of live crosswalks. Things didn't look good. They looked sideways actually. I felt lighter.

Shit.

Am I going to pass out? Well at least let me make it through an hour. I'll just get to 16th Street and then I'll haul it home and ice my feet. Did I mention my feet yet? No. The left heel still has a pain pulling through it. A formidable pain, I might add. In addition to this, because my body has now been adjusted to call attention to previously dormant muscles, asking them to get the hell out of bed and make a difference in my world, the running feels extremely different today than it did yesterday and the day before. Each adjustment asks me to train new muscles, so every time it's a little bit like a new start. Exciting, yes, but also really difficult. So while my hip feels a lot better, my ass is killing me. But the left heel. It worries me. I feel pretty scared. 25 days out and the thing still haunts my runs.

Meanwhile, I'm at 20th Street and the slant seems as though it may begin to dance. I walk a group of 16 paces. Start to run again. Walk again. Run again. Curse myself the whole time, feeling so stupid for forgetting the fuel. Who leaves on a road trip with no gas in the tank?

Anyhow, I made it to the train and up the hill to my house. I dunked my feet in ice cold water out on the deck while I shook. 25 days out. I don't know. I just don't know.

Love,
Sara Elise.

PS: The nice part about being out of my mind is that I did do a good deal of reminiscing about Patrick Swayze. I loved him.

Ten Feet Tall - XTC

2010-06-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

Finally.

I'm at my desk, my computer is hooked up, and I can almost see my house becoming a home. Almost. I've been in the weeds over here at marathon headquarters. What with a move, a crazed work schedule, trying to train, and various body maladies, life seems to have kept me away from my reports here. Turns out, I can't do it on the fly in weird places. Or rather, I don't want to. I tried it on my break at work, a plate of food steaming next to the PR computer as my fellow workers drifted by. The writing was disjointed and flat, lacking a certain toothsome quality I enjoy. Tried it on my laptop surrounded in boxes, the ever present load of donations piling up with crap I lugged to a new house than I never needed in the first place. That, not surprisingly, didn't feel so great either. I even made an attempt in longhand in a notebook that I imagined I might retype here later. But that felt counter to my idea of being where I am at as I tell the marathon/novel story. Seems it all just feels right to do it this way: I like to sit down, have my coffee in my favorite Frankoma mug, a treasured gift from my Tulsa friend Judith, on my right, at home on a tile coaster boasting a faded dandelion weed. Then a short hop from that, the mason jar sweats, beads of water collecting on the sides of it, having spent the evening in the refrigerator infusing the lemon and cucumber flavors. I just don't like water that much. It's boring. Gimme a lime. A lemon. Mint. Something.

Anyhow, since we last met, I took a whole week off after the shots in my feet. Partly because I was unsure of them, and partly because I had to work full time and pack up my life and move. But I did manage to take the advice of a friend and look up a very sports-specific chiropractor to have him look at my condition. I added this nice member to my healthcare team. Dr. Zachary Greene is a dude from Boston. And by dude, I mean like a regular dude kind of guy. He's incredibly handsome, in a way that a lesbian such as myself might forget immediately. It is a breed of good-looking that is ripe with the zest of life, but a life that reads not of my world. Which is perfect because I am not functioning in my world right now. He's also a Red Sox fan, so we've already dispensed with the idea that we will ever speak of this. I loathe the Red Sox. Actually all things having to do with sports in Boston. Until Dr. Greene. Here is my Boston sports bright spot.

Here is a story:

It seems that after a woman reclines through twenty years of her life, she develops a certain subset of muscles that do the majority of limited work required to get through an average day of strolling along a boulevard, smoking a pack of cigarettes on a second hand couch, waitressing in whatever establishment that has come to value wit and personality over speed, and sitting hunched over a keyboard at strange hours stolen during the night. Her body, over time, stops firing certain muscular synapses, while others begin to compensate for their lazier comrades. She develops secret heels spurs she knows nothing of over years of inactivity and slanted posture. She also acquires what a strapping doctor from Boston will later refer to as "a brick" in the middle of her back, refusing to give way to motion and startled by any suggestion to do so. And later, as she nears middle age and develops a desire to care for her long neglected body, donning a spandex ensemble and hopping into a running practice she never could have imagined while lighting the twelfth Marlboro Red of any given Tuesday, she is pounding on feet that seem to be jammed up, having done their best over the years to do what was asked of them in less than optimal circumstances. The tan doctor will wrap his hands around her feet, reminding her that these extremities have 26 bones in each, and those bones all have connective tissue, ligaments, cartilage, fascia surrounding all of it, and then maybe he would perform an educated yank and jerk, popping the arch of the foot to place it hadn't been since sixth grade, and maybe she would burst our laughing right there on the treatment table, the kind of laugh you'd see her let loose with on an old wooden roller coaster at Coney Island. An easy laugh of pure pleasure. The laugh of satisfaction. The laugh of having everything be right. These feet are then wrapped in ice packs with electrodes stuck to the soles, pulsing energy into the stuck places, asking them to wake up again.

Having my feet adjusted was,
like,
one of the best things ever.

I am now under orders to be at physical therapy twice a week, each session coupled with adjustments. The feet, the hips, the back, the neck. Turns out I'm quite a mess. The doctor says I can make it through the race without killin' myself over it, but apparently I have a good amount of work to do to get myself to healthy. I feel pretty prepared to do the work, run the race, unpack my house, and hang out with my people. And charmed life that it seems to be, I may very well have the amazing opportunity to do that whole list of things.

Ok.
I'm less than a month away.

Love,
Sara Elise

A Small Victory - Faith No More

2010-06-17T08:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday could have easily been a complete psychological disaster. And so, friends, here we tell tale of the small victory. The victory in which our heroine carries on, choosing to be a woman with head held high, teetering on numb pillows for feet in the quick rush of San Franciscans getting to work.

The past few days I've been gripped by fear and sadness. The runs have been short but pretty quick, for me, and after seven months of sticking with it, I have finally come to enjoy it a good thirty of forty percent of the time. The enjoyment, though not as frequent as the feeling of toil, far outweighs the struggle. It feels for sure like the weird neon formaldehyde cherry people speak of as the prize at the top of a sundae. I would come up with a better metaphor, but I'm still not through my coffee yet, so just go with the weird cherry as though it matters. The sadness comes in as I realized my feet are destroyed when I get anywhere over ten miles. The fifteen mile day that found it's end in a delirious stagger around Chestnut Street was certainly a face slapper. The ache was seriously beyond what felt bearable, and with 11 miles left in a run for the ribbon, I began to focus on the idea that I might not be able to complete my goal.

I imagined I would be evolved (HA) enough to just accept it and move straight to plan B. Plan B looks like this: I call up my friends and family who are so ceaselessly supportive and wonderful and I tell them I will have to walk a good portion of the route. I will be setting out Saturday morning instead of Sunday, no crowds, no medals, no number pinned to my sausage outfit. No complimentary sports drinks, no encouraging strangers holding out cups of water, no public glory for my whiny Leo ass. But like this all started, Plan B is about finishing. In whatever time it takes. Even if it's a little bit slow. And there at my self made finish line would be all my people, cheering and appreciating my effort, loving me in the San Francisco sun just as I am.

But fuck Plan B.

I want to run the thing, maybe a little walking, but I want to do it the way it is I dream about it. I'll be wanting to quit, and I'll think, right at that moment, there will be a bunch of writers in Mexico, working on their books like I got to, because of all us supported that, and really believed that certain stories must be told, and people deserve the right to have a means to tell them. My little number will be crinkling on my shirt, and all those people flanking the route cheering us on, then me bringing up the rear of twenty thousand, the happiest caboose of all. My mom and dad waving wildly, Ginger with the camera to catch me certainly bawling like a hyena, Schaefer and Dana with their reassuring calm, believing in me the whole time, and Coach Cadwallader and her hot lawyer wife Tara beaming at me, proud. I can't NOT be a Leo. It's my astrological fate. So be it. It comes with big hair, and I like that.

And after this week's runs, I had to start letting go of that image and I didn't want to. I couldn't. I got attached. My feet were fucked. Even with the medicine. And when that comfort began to fade, so did my confidence. The sadness began to crawl over me like a cloak. Maybe it's hormonal, but who can tell as my hormones are the most erratic little bitches around. And even if it is, the feelings are so real, the completely real sensation that even in the sun, I began to walk through life enshrouded in a dark thing, a heavy woolen cape of pre-emptive regret. I could not stop taking my mind walking in the neighborhood of impending failure. All of my tools no match for this disappointment. Mind you, I still hadn't actually failed at anything. It felt surprising to me how much my heart had taken in this goal. I don't know why it was so surprising because clearly, I've endured and kept with it, which is frankly, not like me. I like efficient. The shortest distance between two points is a line, not a twenty six mile run through a city of hills. It is painful to be attached to things. It is the nature of suffering, so I am told. And so I have seen.

Yesterday I went to the doctor and had my heels both injected with cortisone. Friends who have had this medicine in other parts of their bodies all, unanimously, report that it's pretty much a miracle. Which is great, because I need one of those just to complete the task at hand not even including the pain factor of feet. I believe the distance will be providing me with plenty of pain anyhow. The shots hurt, but frankly, who cares? One short long heated pain versus every morning out of the bed in the body of Bilbo Baggins, a hunched over old Hobbit searching for a wizard. There I did it. I made a fantasy book reference. WHAT?

The doctor ordered two more valuable days off from the road, and my cloak got heavier. I sat in the chair staring at my gnarly feet, knowing they would not see a pedicure for over a month. Coach said no pedis. No flip flops. No summer fling feeling. My cute feet have always been a nice feature for me. Cross that off the list for now. I pulled my shoes on over the numb ugly culprits and meandered aimlessly through the streets, staring in shop windows at clothes I either wanted but could not afford, or could afford, but didn't want. Also knowing my brain was set to sadness and self loathing and trying on clothes in that state is really an emotional set-up.

I called Kabuki Hot Springs and what do you know? It was women's day. I've never been there. I decided to actually do a kind thing for myself, finally congratulate myself on the hundreds, literally hundreds of miles I've already run, when I never thought I could even make it to three. I began to see the sun, take a hard look at the path, hardly believing me and the sausage outfit had seen so much together. It's fine for me to accept that I'm scared and sad, but I can have other feelings too. And so I turned the beat around, deciding to walk toward a nice serene oasis in Japantown.

I signed myself up for an Abhyanga Massage. This is a traditional Indian style massage, very relaxing. They light the room with candles and you talk to your nice massage therapist, Trish in my case, about what your dosha may be and she selects the correct oil for your treatment, You are then exfoliated with a dry brush followed by a slather in warmed scented oil for about seventy minutes. Following this, you are left to yourself for a private soak in your Japanese tub flanked by hot herbal tea, a cold cloth with cucumber slices for your eyes, and organic apple sections to eat as you soak. Candles and roses surround you as you return to the world.

Trish comes to inform me that the power has gone out for some reason and so my time in the bath house portion of the spa won't really work. The sauna and the steam bath are cooling too much, and there's no light to see where the hell you are walking. After all the relaxation I've already treated myself to, that's fine with me. But not with Trish. She brings me a free pass to return to the bath house any time I want. It was really the nicest, most perfect morning with myself.

This morning is my last doctor ordered day off before I return to training. Although I can return tomorrow, she did warn me that the effects of the injections may not be felt for up to a week. That's cool, man. I actually can't wait. I never thought I'd be a woman to say that. But here I am. A woman who takes herself for a massage and likes to run. My office is half packed, my life is in boxes, and my feet are unsure of what's possible. I suppose the rest of me is too. But I'm really going to try not not be so attached to the outcome of all this and stay in the moment of it. Especially when the moment can just be a choice to be nice to myself.

If y'all can find that kind of massage wherever you are, it was like, for real, the best thing ever.

Love,
Sara Elise.

Dont Stop Believin' - Journey

2010-06-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to a classic rock station Pandora Radio is constructing just for me based on the band Boston. So far Skynard has crooned the soul of a Simple Man, Asia has endured the Heat of the Moment, and Journey has pleaded for us all, please, Don't Stop Believin'. The hits just keep coming. I imagined myself stumbling and blistered toward the finish line, beside myself with pain, thirst, and stupidity, and begging someone for an ipod just to hear that Journey song. I think that one really sends me around the bend every time. There's something in Steve Perry's vocal on that record that blares such a singular authenticity, real pleading about a small town girl, living in a lonely world. And I suspect, at some point, during the marathon, I'll feel just like that girl, dying to get out, taking a midnight train going anywhere, and I'll want Steve Perry to pull me through. It's just a guess, but I can see it so clearly. And if he's good enough for my favorite sociopath, Tony Soprano, he's good enough for me.

I took more time off from running this week than I have since I started the training in December. (Queen is playing now. Fat Bottom Girls. God Bless Freddy Mercury.) Three days out of the sausage outfit. It scared me to take the time, scared me not to take it. I thought I might have forgotten how to do it, or my body might have closed up shop. I felt scared I would run the tiny three mile route, the one that used to be my big big goal, just get down Market Street to the Bay. Reward myself with a beautiful view. I counted my paces this morning wondering what my feet would feel like by Sansome Street. I couldn't push the worry down. I suppose it became an opportunity for me to practice re-focusing over and over on staying with my pacing. Keep my head in the game and my breath on the stride. Just a small run. A friendly jog. The weather was exquisite. A perfect mix of sun and breeze, enough warmth to get the old heart on track and enough wind to kiss the forehead. (AC/DC now. I had to skip The Who. Ever since that shit show they put on at Super Bowl halftime in February, I just can't face their music. That game was epic. I mean, I'm still happy for the Saints, but I feel scarred from that fifteen minutes up there with The Who.) I made it all the way down, still never shook the scared feeling. Maybe it's there for a reason. Maybe I'm supposed to just keep it by me to keep me honest or something. The race is really bearing down, and me? I'm stuck in a stupid pain problem. I'm looking forward to the shots. The pain is back to a totally bearable level, but I'd like it to just go. Bye Bye, Pain. Thanks for the motivation and all, but get the fuck out.

Another thing I noticed this morning about fear is that the kindness meditation that has worked so well for me recently didn't even occur to me as a tool to use. I've gotten pretty good at it lately (Scorpions, No One Like You) and even though the run only covered a short distance, I would have thought the words would have come to me. Apparently, I have to come to them. Ha. Wouldn't you know it? It's just like working on the book. This weird collaboration I seem to be building with my very self. I can drag myself out there, I can put one foot in front of the other, but I don't get help from this voice I'm working with until I actually ask for it. Or maybe I do sometimes and I don't notice it. That's how entitlement works, right? If you truly believe you are entitled to a thing, it will never occur to you that you might be stepping on someone's foot to get what's yours, because you just know it's yours. I think this whole thing has been fantastically weird. I wonder if I have done a good enough job explaining to you how I am such a terrible terrible applicant for the position of Marathon Runner. I am a lark. I am a long shot and a peripheral character. (War Pigs, Sabbath) I am also oddly committed to doing the weird thing.

The other day I saw a picture in my mind of something and I said to Ginger:

I have to talk to you about something I really want to do differently when we move.
Um OK.
I want to get a fish.
And I want him to be white and live in a nice bowl with a pretty plant and white stones and some coral. And he has this red thing on his head. Like he's wearing a ballcap.
A fish?
Yes. And I want to name him Bacon.
Um. OK.

I have never spoken about wanting a fish. Nor has it really occurred to me in like twenty years or more that I might want one. But as soon as I saw the little guy in my head, I knew it was how it had to be. That's how it is with the marathon. The marathon and Bacon are the same. Fated.

The run this morning was really quite nice, regardless of being present for the fear and tripping out. The pain was present but bearable. And I wore my Guns -N- Roses shirt to help me along. It worked. So if any of you know Steve Perry, see if maybe he's free on July 25th. I'd love to see him.

Love,
Sara Elise

Feeling Good - Nina Simone

2010-06-10T22:17:00.000-07:00

Anti-inflammatories are the absolute shit. Seriously, it's like someone snuck in last night and replaced my feet with the extremities of a slightly fatigued athlete rather than the gnawed up dinner rolls that I had been trying to walk on all day yesterday. It felt so awful.

I feel so

much better today,

Thanks for asking.

Love,
Sara Elise

Unsatisfied - The Replacements

2010-06-10T08:06:00.000-07:00

The doctor is sending me to get an MRI. The three letters that come to mind for me in this situation are WTF. The MRI is a special kind of x-ray that shows soft tissue and does all these other fancy things, but what it really means for me is that I didn't get the cortisone shot in case the fascia on my foot is actually torn. This is what they call in the business of training a harsh toke.The good doctor has put me on a steady diet of anti-infammatorie s, two each morning and evening, a day off from training yesterday, and perhaps today as well, although I am going to try and engage in some kind of activity if I can't do the 6-8 miles from yesterday. If there is no tear, I will go get the shots next week.

The doctor came in and looked at the old dogs and poked around. It didn't take long. When I got up to walk out, she took one look at my gait and said You better go ahead and take today off. Poor thing. Then she asked me a bunch of questions about past injuries.

Ever had a broken bone?
No. Maybe my toe when I was little but we never found out because no one really cares if your toe is actually broken or not.
Uh huh. Well, I'm trying to determine your pain tolerance.
Oh. I haven't had a baby either. (She laughs. Even though I'm really not joking and wonder what kind of chemicals the body creates to allow such a thing to happen to women. And then what kind of memory loss we all employ to let people go ahead and do it again.) But you know I do have almost forty tattoos or something.
Yes you do.

The doctor makes it clear to me that she believes I will still be able to participate in the race. Nonetheless I am gripped by worry that my big big goal is being fucked with by the gods. It's surprising how sad I feel. I mean I feel so sad, right there in the fancy downtown office, like a girl who actually has a shot at the championship. A gold medal once every four years. I mean if worse came to worse, I could run the Nike women's marathon in October. Rumor has it the course is less punishing, and a good portion of it runs along the beach. That's pretty. Plus they pamper the gals and you get a Tiffany charm. At least that's what I heard. But I don't want to wait until October. I want to do the thing now.

There are two great things that came of my time in the waiting room. I did my best not to hand my day over to panic and depression. While I did not wholly succeed at this, part of the process was coming up with a backup plan. I could just gather my friends and family on Saturday before the official race and do the course anyhow, alone, at my own pace without the hubbub and pressure of having 24,999 other people around plus staff. Or I could just show up, do what I can do, and accept that that's all I had. Whoda thunk I have this much at all? Not me. That is the fucking truth of it. The other thing that was nice to really have time for in that room was a wash of gratitude about health insurance. Part of being a grocer, aside from the insane amount of glamor and fame it provides, is the health insurance. Because I work at a store where the workers own the business, we voted to really provide ourselves with means to take care of our bodies and those of our families. Even our gay families. It's amazing. I can look up the sports medicine specialist dood and know it's an option for me to go. I can go get the WTF, I mean MRI and just know that's going to be okay. Amazing. Bring on that pallet of cat food. I'll stock it happily.

Anyhow, things already seem a little better just from the anti-inflammatories I took yesterday and this morning. I am sure I'll make it to the course, and all my travels down the avenues of fear and sadness yesterday will be relegated to mere simple scenic routes of life, not based in any kind of tragic outcome. The sausage will prevail!

Love,
Sara Elise

Too Fast For Love - Motley Crue

2010-06-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

Today I will revisit the dear podiatrist, Dr. Sanders. It's a good thing. Last night I decided to do that thing folks do with a new car. Let's take her out on the highway and really open her up. See what she can do. It was kind of fun, going faster. The sweat just poured out of me, until three and a half miles in, I eased up. I could feel something not quite right going on with my right knee, the hip not a huge fan of velocity either, so I just decided to bring the team home, happy to have tried a new jam, and stunned that I shaved close to a minute off each mile. Not because that's my goal, but just because I find it interesting to see what this thing can do. I spent so many years ignoring it, being, essentially, in a state of horror about it, that this new relationship of cooperating with my body is kind of fascinating. I really have just put it through the ringer, but thankfully, the structure, thus far, has seen fit to allow me some more health.

I think, alas, it might also need a cortisone shot or two. My heels hit the floor today in a groan and I felt much like last night's outing covered 14 miles. I don't know if I'm doing it wrong or the heel spurs are just too much a match for the training, but I am really past the point of being able to handle it. The last long run was unbearable toward the end and I still had 11 miles to go to finish a marathon. It's not that I mind the pain mentally, it's that my body won't actually keep going I don't think. Maybe I'm not pushing hard enough. I don't know.

I also heard tale told of a holistic chiropractic wizard whose specialty is athletes in pain. The guy's whole mission in medicine is to help people move their bodies pain free. Which I am entirely in the market for. So I am going to track this feller down as well and gather the team. It takes a village. And I'm doin' this thing even if I have to limp about it.

And on another note, here is an outtake from the writing retreat. Today is my last day of this one. It has been amazing. I am really focusing on how a girl can make a life of this writing and photographing situation. Maybe I can't afford the city if I want to do that. Maybe I need grants. Maybe working forty hours a week doesn't realistically leave me enough time to build a career. Or maybe once I am done training I can replace the long runs with submissions and residency applications.

Nonetheless.

The good news is... I love writing. So much that the pain which arrives each time I stand to go get something in the kitchen is just another little bump in the road. My controls are still set to "all systems go".

And here is where Pandora watches her best friend get swiped like a pack of gum at Walgreen's. Except it's at a show at Pnyx with Orpheus' band.

I found Persephone’s face in a state I had never seen, a complete calm across it. There was no faint smirk, no figuring in the brow, no sparkle to the eye. it was as if she was willing for the first time off the mountain to let the world happen around her, and not make the world happen around her. She had put down her Olympian charms in the face of these mortals. It was un fucking real.

The crowd of beautiful mortals hushed and parted, ready to be forever changed by the night, for better or for worse, just ready. We all stood, hundreds of us, made up, made out, made over and then finally ourselves and ready. All the costuming ceased to matter and the march wore on, the outfits stopped figuring in to anything and the march wore on. The sex in the sky vanished, the potential of frenzy soaked up by this procession. They reached the stone and set the drums around the girl.

Orpheus turned in the night to face us all, lifted his head to the stars and in honor of his chosen space he bellowed

Who wishes to speak?

And there was no one.

He was patient.

He looked to each and every human available for eye contact. He looked at Persephone for an extra long time, honoring her Olympian presence, but she uttered nothing. Her face stayed placid, a lake of fondness. Every face looked as hers did: kind.

As Orpheus inhaled the stew of the people’s scent, I scanned the unearthly beauty of the crowd, my peace interrupted by the purse. The jar rattled. Wings beating in a sick tumult, a thrum on alert. And there in the shadows at the back of the platform I found the one singular face not looking at Orpheus, but looking at me.

The jar continued its misbehavior as the band exploded, waiting for his voice to join in. The sky darkened with the arrival of the Sirens, who in this moment, no one feared. Medusa herself could show up to go-go dance and the crowd would welcome her, toss tips to her snakes for snacks and dance along. I could not arrive fully, the purse beside itself with fever, looking to fly from my side, the eyes behind the stage watching me with every twitch of the bag. I had never seen this person, could barely make out the face. But from here, I knew tonight would never recoil from any of us.

And finally, finally, he sang.

The ground opened, a black chariot appeared, Hades ripping through the earth in full glory, landing in front of Persephone in her first moment of calm. The music plowed on for the ruler of the underworld, offering the goddess the shotgun seat in the best ride on the planet, or under it. Persephone thought this whole time she’d been preparing for Orpheus, when her destiny was so much more than she could have known. She crawled right into the chariot with him and they soared above the show, Persephone whipping her neck around in abandon sitting in the midst of everything a girl could ever want.

And then she was gone.

I bid you farewell and off I go to my final writing session.

Love,

Sara Elise

Add It Up - Violent Femmes

2010-06-08T15:43:00.000-07:00

Well, turns out that just like the running, some days the writing won't come together either.

So be it.

One bad day isn't going to kill me. Obviously, or the book would have been dead, buried, and decomposed long ago. I won't lie. It's kind of a bum out when you have your rhythm going, the characters are just Chatty Cathies going on and on about their mythic existence, philosophising, mourning, laughing, smoking, whatever, easily exposing themselves on the page as my fingers hunt and peck like little hot flames across the keys and then poof. Nothing. It doesn't feel awesome.

Today I spent the writing hours grinding the gears. Type and erase. Seek and destroy. Catch and release. Cliches and bad structure and bullshit flowery camouflage. Too much? Must be time to visit Facebook. Have some fruit salad. Watch the new Gaga video. Get a little space and go back. Nope still sucks. Push through it anyhow. Let yourself write crap. Do it. Create the mediocre blather that gets to the next place. Don't quit. It's cool, man. Part of the process.

Something about all the running has let today NOT be a tragedy. I think all those times I walked or cut out or quit taught me something. I feel like enormous goals have room to fail. In fact, I think part of that process means there is a necessity of failure within it. And those failures have room to be steps on the way to success. So today, instead of dragging the mean girl out, I actually feel okay about the rough ride. I got some good ideas about plot out of if. I like the basic place I got to. And I may return to try again after my five mile run. We'll see how that goes.

Speaking of that, including today's five miles, I am scheduled to run 242 miles before the marathon on July 25th, 2010. That means I could run all the way to Reno, lose my ass at a craps table, and still get back to Trukee before I had to start hitchhiking. I love Reno and Tahoe, by the way. But I honestly can't believe I am a woman who could trek there by foot. Turns out I am.

I am woman.

Hear me roar.

A long slow meow of a roar.

Love,

Sara Elise

You Can Do It - Ice Cube

2010-06-07T17:36:00.000-07:00

Saturday everything was different. I moved along for 14.7 miles. Three and a half hours. I ended up stranded and limping through my least favorite place in the city, Chestnut Street in the Marina. No one has eaten a carb there for seven years.

Who am I to judge?
Sheesh.

After much jogging, some walking, and a little sprinting for good measure, I dragged what was left of my carcass to the Apple store and typed out an email to Ginger from an iPad. My first. Eh. The thing didn't thrill me. This jaunt brought me to experience certain sensations of pain I have not yet felt in this life. Each heel a bruise to pound, the knees feeling unhinged, mostly on the right, and the hips aching. Not like where you put your hands on your hips, but where, on the sides of your legs, there is space around the corner from your ass, above the thigh. Furthermore, a fatigue in the lower back, a throbbing in my left arm.

Like I mentioned, I'm a bad planner, so it didn't help matters that I spent the previous evening getting a huge tattoo outline. I don't want to brag about how gorgeous the thing is, but ok, I will. It's so dang pretty. There's a barn owl in flight clutching an old skeleton key tagged by a red rope. A banner weaves in under the bird to an antique padlock, open. The banner bears a Rilke quote, "Let everything happen to you." That run across the bridge reminded me of the quote. To tell you the truth, everything reminds me of it. The shocking utter pleasure of Wednesday, the insistent pain of Saturday. All of it. It all matters. I'm too old to try and avoid discomfort. It's what life does, the necessity of our humanity. But you know, I am also old enough to know better than to schedule a tattoo the night before the longest run of my life. Or run/walk. Duh. Anyhow, I'll show you the thing when it's done.

I will call the foot doctor and I will move forward with the training.
No matter what. I'll do my best.

I can do it.
I can do it.
I can do it.

Love,
Sara Elise

I Feel It All - Feist

2010-06-07T07:47:00.000-07:00

No one has ever accused me of claiming a championship ring in the Super Bowl of time management. All the way back in December when I told my friend Sarah, otherwise known as Coach Cadwallader (see finish time for #169), that I wanted to run the San Francisco Marathon and also finish the first draft of my novel by August 21, 2010, she replied in a supportive fashion but with a hedging note in her tone.

The San Francisco Marathon is one of the hardest. There's the Avenue of the Giants. That's much flatter and also quite beautiful.

Nah. I live here. I'll just practice on the course.

Uh huh. Well, yeah, I think you can do it. But maybe both might be hard. The training takes a lot of time.

It's cool. I can do it.

Ok. Well yeah. Ok. I'll send you your first schedule of training.

I just assumed the dry catch in her reply was a symptom of her being British. But no. Turns out here we are down the road, and I have no time for anything. Nothing. I'm falling behind on my house stuff, my book only gets attention when time gets set aside and scheduled, I don't really leave the house past 8pm, even on weekends, and my Saturdays consist solely of going for a long long run and spending the rest of the day recovering and lounging. Maybe I can do some laundry or dishes. Maybe.

It's true I may have to modify my goals, which I'm open to, and hopefully if that happens I can manage to modify without some self-critical shitstorm for a soundtrack. I'm not sure why I thought training for a marathon and completing the first draft of a novel wouldn't cost me much, but I've found denial can often be a majestic tool serving as the gateway to great heights. Had someone really been able to convey to me the enormity of my undertakings, they may not have been undertook. But one thing that rings a resounding gorgeous bell this week is not how much things cost, but how much they are worth.

I had most of the day off Wednesday, save for a meeting with some colleagues I enjoy and respect and get paid to work with, and decided I would write in the morning and run in the evening. I normally run in the mornings and relegate writing to whenever a moment shows its face, which recently is round about never. The morning work went swimmingly well. Amazing really. Exhilarating. Sometimes writing is mysterious. It's like working on a collaborative process with someone, except it's yourself. I will leave the book for weeks on end, months sometimes, and at points in its life, I left it for a few years. When I return to it after stretches, it is clear to me that the thing has, like a child, gone through the stages of development where the story has almost gained a kind of sense of self. It realizes it is separate from me, its author.

I wonder what Lacan would say about this?

No matter.

Heading back into the work is interesting. Sometimes I have an idea about what I want to happen, but like my parents, I'm quite sure, found out, sometimes the being wants what it wants and maybe I can't force it without breaking the thing. And so I write into the piece as openly as I can. And when the best thing happens: the piece tells me things. A sentence will tumble out that I had no idea was inside me. To the extent that it feels like it wasn't inside me, but is a product of a collaboration between me and the work that is being built, regardless of the fact that I built it. The work develops a prescience, a code of values for itself. On a good day, an amazing day, writing feels like I am merely transcribing a thing that already exists somewhere in a middle world. There is a voice that materializes and my fingers just clack away. Sometimes plot structure materializes, elements or events that have never occurred to me in any cognizant manner. It feels like spinning straw into gold. It is without a doubt, one of the most magical, rewarding, soaring feelings in life.

Running has never even approached this moment for me. Yet I keep on toward this goal, harvesting quite a bushel of other succulent fruits of labor. It is power blasting rust from my long oxidized self-esteem. It really does wonders for my skin. It is the most victorious kind of meditative work that's arrived for me yet, providing me with enormous swathes of serenity and beauty. It gives me much needed solitude in a packed world, leaving me with a sense of accomplishment in a salt moustache. But that sense of soaring, maybe, maybe in fleeting seconds.

Then Wednesday that all changed. By evening I was tired from everything. I wore the sausage outfit around under sweats all day, knowing I had too much time to convince myself not to do a run. A 6-8 mile distance was scheduled by the coach, all training at this point ramped up to the final few weeks, and I felt inwardly bratty about spending an hour and a half doing this. Ginger was making homemade pizza. The house was clean. Danny was coming over. Blah Blah Blah. The usual parade or reasons not to run.

But I left the house to visit my friend Gregory at the shop where he works. It's my favorite flower shop. He recently reminded me that peonies, my very favorite flower, were in high season and I had not come to be among them once this season. I thought between he and the flowers, I might feel inspired. I didn't, frankly. I wanted to just hang out. But he and his date convinced me I should get out there. It was getting late.

The first two miles, as usual, felt like crap. That never fails. Like when you put your jeans on in the morning and they feel weird. Takes a few minutes for the denim to adjust. Still wanting to give up, I gently talked myself into block after block until I saw an old pal across the street. She yelled like crazy at me, like a fan at a race, and I just felt everything come together. Her total buoyancy, my sweat, the self manufactured opiates, and bam. It was just like the writing. The world got more colorful. My body felt amazing, like it wasn't mine. My feel hurt, but I didn't care at all. San Francisco revealed all its glory to me, especially through the industrial stretch. Colors colliding, mist rolling in, turning to fog just as I hit the water. What a beautiful town. Sun setting. Throngs of folks out laughing. The run ran itself. I just showed up to meet it. I went seven miles and felt like a glorious animal. A lion licking big paws. And I came home to Danny in the kitchen, giving Ginger a super cute new haircut, my homemade pizza waiting with fresh basil hand cut all over the thing.

And all just in time for the crunch of the race.

It's almost here.

Love,

Sara Elise.

Glass of Water - Coldplay

2010-06-03T08:35:00.000-07:00

On Monday I set out for a shorter run, four miles down the road. I felt a little weird at the outset, but laced up, not being able to totally place the feeling, as frankly, I'm pretty new at trying to live in my body. After 6:21, the feeling morphed into what I would refer to as a headache. By 7:41, I had to stop running as the headache forced a twitch in my left eye, and had moved to my back teeth and jaw muscles, which were, in one short minute, now throbbing. My vision became slightly fuzzy, which might have been pleasant in a movie scene, but in a sausage outfit on Church Street, it seemed not the sensation a girl like myself could embrace. I made my way to a land of tea and had about three cups of peppermint. Magically, the headache disappeared in the arms of the mighty elixir, the throbbing eased up, and my vision sharpened to the point of a tac. I rested with friends for about 90 minutes and decided to run home. Within one mile, the sensations returned. My first experience with true and acute dehydration, it turns out. Not cute. In fact, queasy and kind of scary.

I find drinking water to be a chore. I loathe being pulled out of a focus to pee. I hate being in service to the needs of my body, my hormones, and now my muscle tissue. While coffee, the great dehydrator, spins an entire attending culture in its orbit, water has just become a way to kill Fiji and ruin our already beautiful, dying ocean with plastic. And in my personal world, it's a serious pain in the ass I feel resentful having to give a shit about. Course, it makes sense. The adult female body is about 55% water. Over half my solid body is a liquid. That's hard to wrap my head around, but since I am a person who pretty much blindly accepts scientific facts, let's just call it a fact for argument's sake here. I'm not a scientist. I'm a grocer. So at that kind of level, it makes sense I would have to really keep on top of the liquid intake to keep it real. And by real, I mean to keep from passing out while running.

So I am back to lugging around a mason jar full of water. I try to sweeten the deal by cutting slices of lemon into the thing, cucumber some days. I learned this from visiting rich lady spas on spy missions, stalking the lands of folks sporting what my pal Silas calls "the sheen of the well-off". Also a muddled clump of fresh mint leaf from the garden patch works wonders for a jar of water. I am also using this opportunity to regain a closeness to my Pandora character, lugging around her famous jar, as she says, like a useless barren uterus. I feel her pain. I resent the thing, even with its bobbing yellow and green jewels. This staying healthy gig is a drag some days. It isn't that I long for the days of stagnation and cigarettes exactly, but I am still consistently drawn to a look of a wan, skinny lady, her tattered jeans hanging perfectly off her angular hips, the faded AC/DC t-shirt showcasing an elegant collarbone and dangly earrings. And invariably, a cigarette in her imaginary hand, fingers topped with chipped nail polish. Alas, my cliched fantasy of self-destruction does not truly suit me, and so on my runs, fortified with my completely boring intake of stupid water, I try to rearrange my fantasy life to include a wider version of jeans and t-shirts. And by the way, if anyone is getting rid of any aging rocker shirts, I'm open to salvage.

And frankly, it's not like I think of myself as an athlete who actually needs to regard their body as their main instrument. I see why an athlete would need such specialized tools as hydration and long stretching sessions of tired quads. See, look at these definitions:

a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.

an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis,golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.

a particular form of this, esp. in the out of doors.

With the first, I am clearly not engaging in a contest. Just an ancient Greek measurement of 26.2 miles, to match the Greek roots of my novel. Also note, for the sake of argument, that my undertaking has nothing to do with game or even skill particularly. I am not trying to research a better stride, work on my breathing, whittle my time down, or win anything. And as for a sport, while the "race" will play out with 25,00 other people, I have no intention of competing.

The undertaking here is more akin to durational performance art, I believe. It is a plea to my mind to endure, to live in synch with my body, to familiarize itself with its own home, formerly living together separately, like a couple who has grown apart and evolved into living in separate rooms of the same house, finding divorce impossible, yet marriage a profound misery. My mind is through with that bullshit. And so is my body. So my thing is that I simply keep going. It's the only rule. I set a goal and try to reach it. Then I think about the nature of what I learn, what I witness, what I see, and what each step informs.

I am looking forward to how the work of the road informs the work of the page this week. My writing session begins Saturday. Five days of scheduled writing hours for nothing but the book. The work will kick off Saturday after I attempt my longest run yet: 15 miles. And as Mary Schmich, although an urban legend attributes it to Kurt Vonnegut, once warned in a brilliant piece: I won't forget the sunscreen.

Love,

Sara Elise

Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen

2010-06-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

Saturday was a big day here in San Francisco. It was sunny. No fog. No drizzle. No spring showers. Just big big sun. Of course, since we are here, there was some attending breeze, which is part of what I love about living here. I love the sun, but I hate being too hot. Unless there is a pool and an air conditioned room someplace near. For instance, when maybe you pile a bunch of lesbians into a mid century modern house for a week in Palm Springs and you go out and do a huge grocery shopping and the rest of the week is spent meandering from the pool to the jigsaw puzzle to the kitchen to the pool and in the cool evening, a final jaunt to the hot tub under the stars. I just mean, for instance. Other than that, I like it here, mild and easy. Rain? I'll take it.

As a result, I usually run in long sleeves. This provides me protection from tattoo inspired inappropriate comments from strange men on Market Street, some comfort from the elements, an assurance that there will be no weird shirt chaffing under my arms, and a great place to wipe the flow of snot that accompanies all chilly jogs. But buoyed by this development in heat, I took Saturday for a nice trial run at going a long distance on our first real summer day here by the Bay with an alteration to the sausage outfit. I donned an actual tank top.

Now, since the weather here is of the mild variety and since we have been in our non-shiny seasons, there was much for me to forget about with the sun. Most notably that it will burn a person. This situation is much like how I feel when I hear men and women talk about their process of creating a family. Since a lot of my time is spent in my beloved gay ghetto, I actually forget that when men and women have sex with each other, this could very well result in a pregnancy. My people are always trying so damn hard to get pregnant, coming up with different plans involving so much temperature taking, money, huge conversations with different couples or seducing strangers in bars, I forget that simply doing it (with a man) on a random tuesday afternoon could do the trick for folks. I plumb forget that sex with men gets ladies pregnant. And like this, I forget the simple scientific fact that the sun will fry a lady's winter shoulders. Needless to say, I left the house without sunscreen.

Here are some results from my outing:

I knew I wanted to be out there for two and half to three hours. I also knew that my left heel was killing me, as I unfortunately spoke too soon about the new running shoes fixing everything. My soul was still a little on the flaccid side of the bed, and I was beginning to live once again in my deep fear of failure. I knew I couldn't run for very long that day. Or maybe I put that spell on myself, but no matter how I arrived at that place in my head, there I was. I decided to just stay put anyhow, whether I walked or ran or what. Just stay put, I thought. And as miracles do happen: I did it. I walked about a third of the time. I did sprints as well. I ran and I walked. I walked and I ran. I had no deep thoughts. The time was not very interesting. I plunged deeper into the idea that I was losing it during crunch time. I could not find the feeling of being happy that I had persevered when normally I would have quit, although I could see that as true, but instead I felt flat. Almost bored. But not quite.

Then I got home to find I had in fact, missed the sunscreen in a big way.

Meanwhile, my coach has sent me my final training schedule. The thing is so daunting. Not because it's unreasonable, but because I am having trouble finding the belief in myself this will take. Between now and the race I will have to pack up my home and move, go to work many hours a week, run a few hundred miles, and get back on the wagon with sugar. Did I mention I fell off the wagon last week?

Well, I did.

See? I feel like it's all slipping. The nutrition. The performance. The body pain. I am losing sight of why I am trying to do such a weird thing.

I suppose this is the thick DOUBT portion of the program. The part of the training that stands in for how I feel sometimes in life.

Wait, why am I doing all this?
Why do I have to go to work for 40 hours?
Why am I trying to write a book when there are billions of other books for people to read?
Why am I writing a blog about this?

I think being Jewish has always for me been about a heritage of intellectual inquiry. I was taught to ask all the time, Why? This inquiry would be my path to a learned life. And now it feels like part of being a Jewess, non-practicing, yet wholly identified, is about that piece of accepting that the places where Why doesn't work, are the biggest lessons of all. That Why is not a spiritual question, and that sometimes a girl must just throw her big Jewish nose to the sky, square her sunburned shoulders to the dark and walk ahead with even breath, believing that mostly the Not Knowing is, in fact, the Why.

And speaking of writing a book, I am embarking on a five day trek of working solely on the running and the writing on Saturday with the writers Rhiannon Argo and Michelle Tea. You will get a break from this running talk and a sashay through the marathon of the novel.

And speaking of being Jewish, I cannot leave you without saying how crushed I am by the events of this week concerning the flotilla that the Israeli forces invaded. It's like how if a child grows up being abused, their chances of becoming abusers are painfully and tragically higher. I feel like that's what this looks like to me. We are a people who for centuries have been hunted and tortured, picked on, singled out and humiliated. And now here is the moment we go nuts, preying the same way on a people that just wants to eat. To live. I am devastated by my tribe. And I know my name appears on this thing called the SHIT List, Self Hating Israel-Threatening Jews, because our culture makes us pick sides. But I am on the side of kindness. Not the side of land rights. And frankly, I would think we, of all people, would know better.

And so I say for myself, in a voice clear as a bell, Not In My Name. I am so sorry to the families who are suffering in this occupation in Gaza, but also to all of us, Jews and Gentiles alike, who are suffering in the occupation of our very minds. I grew up int he shadow of death camps, Hebrew school teaching us to stand by our homeland no matter what the cost. But now I feel like the cost is too high. I want my people to be free, but not at the expense of the humans who live next door.

I feel afraid to post this. Like I said, I know it's not popular to be a Jew who speaks out against the actions of Israel. And I know this is a blog about running and writing. And I know I took a harsh left turn back there. I respect the space for all Jews to disagree with me. To defend their homeland by any means necessary. I want to be able to argue amongst ourselves productively. I guess I just don't see how approaching a literal white flag with an Uzi makes any sense at all.

Peace to us all.

Love,
Sara Elise

Hello - Oasis

2010-05-29T08:43:00.000-07:00

On September 12, 2001, I sat in at a kitchen table in Somerville, MA in a shitty apartment with an array of simple tools at my disposal. Gus was curled on the floor around me, as always knowing something was wrong. He stays close to me, calm, and utterly quiet whenever I feel sad. The dog knows everything about the way I feel. Either that, or he is a perfect creature to project such comfort upon, but either way, he has always been one of the great comforts of my life, big perfect brown eyes lined dark and kind. And on that day, the day a whole nation needed a Gus, he lay still, right there by me and my tools, perfectly ready for any move I made.

My moves, as it turns out, were slight. I held the tips of two stainless steel sewing needles into the flame of a disposable lighter until they seemed cleansed. Then I unwound a length of 100% cotton thread from a spool and found it a new home on the ends of the needles, entwining the two together and leaving a wad of cotton by the bottom with just the pointy heads sticking out. The rest wound up around the shafts of the needles for me to grip. I dunked the contraption into a capful of india ink and poked a small heart into my left thumb. The whole time I cried, still reeling from the way those people jumped from the falling building. It wasn't even the image of the planes that haunted me, it was everything after that. I suppose if I was somebody else, it would have been everything that came before. The heart was a reminder to me. Try to always just start from there, right on my hand with a line to my heart, left side awkward but for that. I figured if I could remind myself to start from there, I could have a little bit of practice in thwarting my own personal war on the "other", whomever that might be. I also decided that day to begin a commitment to a practice that, when I engage it, serves me well. I say hello to everyone, especially strangers in the world with whom I make eye contact.

Just
Hello.

I had this idea that if everybody began saying that to each other, simply acknowledging the humanity of the person on the sidewalk or at the corner store or passing slowly on a tractor on a stretch of country road, late fall sunlight turning the world a little bit rusty, maybe then we could begin to see our own humanity, our own mistakes and dread and demons. Maybe we could all just say hello, relieve ourselves of the petty assumptions we are bound to make, the silent ways we pick teams, a mean gym class of people leaving the unskilled as a worthless afterthought, or worse, a punishment.

I don't manage it all the time, but I still believe in it, the simplicity of the two syllables. It actually works the best when I don't feel like it, and I do it anyhow. And on my runs, I try hardest, especially when I am hating the run. I say hello to all the runners that trot toward me, try to manage the whole word, although sometimes I just get a nod. Some people just look down, don't let you say a thing. Others look imposing in their focus, then you say hi and their face explodes into a greeting, Mornin'!

Yes.
Yes it is.

My run, as the hellos multiply, always manages to weed out discomfort. Or change the focus from discomfort to something else. I begin to focus on strange social things, how we all share this city, a diminutive town in an agreement with fault lines and earthquakes, keeping it's skyline low and elegant. I think about how strange it is to not know your neighbors, be crammed on trains sharing scent and space and still pretend there is no intimacy happening. But running, I say the hellos or flash pained grins and the people, they smile back, say

I'm doing this thing too.
I live here too.
Keep going.
You can do it.
We are the same.

These people and their willingness to be with me for a passing stride remind me that as much as stopping seems like it would be a relief, not stopping has its charms as well. Not quitting is a practice as much as quitting. It is not a Herculean effort, it is a moment at a time, just one choice to keep the stride. Then later I may have to make the choice again , perhaps as soon as three strides, but I don't have to make a choice to get over all the hurdles at once.

There is something so amazing about saying hello to someone who doesn't answer. Looks away. Avoids me and my smile. Maybe my offer is ultimately self-serving, intrusive or rude. Maybe it's a way for me to congratulate myself on how evolved I am becoming, stretching my broad shoulder out of the socket to pat my liberal back in congratulations. Maybe I should just save my money up for a Prius and shut the fuck up. Maybe not everyone thinks I'm so great. And that has to be okay too. Because when the time comes that I'm the person that doesn't say hello, the day I close up and don't smile back, act like a shitty neighbor with an ugly fence, well, I have to live there as well.

I know Hello won't save us from ourselves. And since I gave myself that tattoo on my thumb, I had an accident at work last year with, ironically, a box knife that sliced the thing in half horizontally, leaving a thin scar separating the puffy humped top of the thing from the pointy bottom. I look at it some days and I think, it's true that Hello won't save the world, but maybe it can be a salve for some scar tissue.

So,

Good Morning.
Hello.

Love,
Sara Elise

Learn To Fly - Foo Fighters

2010-05-26T19:15:00.000-07:00

The lack of text this week owes itself to a terrible thing, although it could have been a more terrible thing. I had a loved one in the hospital with a mysterious creeping crud that stressed me the hell out. The week involved much train riding to and fro, a swath of real estate in my mind occupied with tripping out and panic, and a dearth of running. The run I went on one day was so craptastic, I only made it 1.7 miles and without a "choice" even registering in my head, my legs just stopped. I found myself on Jefferson in the thick of Fisherman's Wharf, enmeshed in throngs of tourists verging on tears for my utter lack of control over almost everything in the universe. Not that I really want to Run the Big Show. Mostly.

I'm happy to report that my loved one was sent home and is well on the way to thriving. I have tossed all the science fiction nightmares away and am back on track with the trek. My last long run lasted for two hours, which I felt pretty good about considering it followed closely on the heels of the 1.7 mile debacle. The long run was strangely satisfying as I felt like my mind stayed gentle. It was so exhausted from its stress, from dreaming up tragic fictions and holding itself in a fist for so many days. Did I mention I also got in a fight with a cab driver who took me to the wrong hospital? I did. As he insisted the mistake was my fault, my blood pressure climbed. At one point I said Like I told you when I got in the cab, I'm on my way to the hospital, so through my destination, you can imagine I'm already having a Very Bad Day. So just stop talking. Be quiet altogether. I rode in silence with the guy while I fumed. I don't often tell my elders to shut the fuck up, essentially. But in this case, I felt ok about it. Anyhoots, back to the run.

I was so worn out, a jogging nub of a girl, endorphins opening up my timid closed terrified heart. Each mile brought me closer to my real fears and feelings, trotting slowly along the water, passing by fellow runners moving gracefully through San Francisco at blistering speeds. Some even in those weird finger running shoes. Me? I kept my pace slow, even for myself. I just focused on my heart unfolding, spring petals after rain, a gingerly look up to the world around me.

It was one of those days where everything seemed like it was made by Hercules. I perceived things in historical contexts, and each time I scanned the pain through my hips and feet, leveling my honest review of it to check whether I should continue toward the day's goal of two hours, I looked around. I let my eyes trace the outlines of buildings thinking, God, someone invented the crane. People figured out how to carve details and hoist beauty into a city skyline of stone moldings. I thought about the resilience of will, the goddamn Wright Brothers. They were so in love with an impossible idea. It had to be impossible, right? But they didn't just brush off naysayers, they brushed off the laws of Physics. Can you imagine the balls or the insanity it takes to say,

Gravity? Eh fuck it. Fuck Gravity. We're going to fly.

I thought about them and I laughed right out loud.

Love,

Sara Elise

The Long Run - The Eagles

2010-05-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

I officially have a blistering case of FOMO. The Fear of Missing Out. I have to say no to everything. No going to see your band play. No going to the Wednesday night dance party. No movies later than a seven o'clock, which is actually pushing it. On week days I get up at five every morning, either to get to work by six or to get a run in before work by eight or nine. Saturdays are the long days, reaching past three hours and therefor requiring Friday nights to be limited as well, sleeping takings its slot as the high priority for the night. Saturday nights I could go out, but if I ran for over three hours that day like a good soldier, the chances of my feeling inspired toward that are limited. I have two more months of this "athletic" schedule, during which I also need to pack up my house to move, try and finish the rough draft of the book, and also make sure I actually keep some of my pals.

God, who woke up on the whiny side of the bed?

Somebody better call the whambulance.

Tonight, however, I will be heading out for the RADAR Spectacle. It's the event of the literary season! Michelle is throwing a fantastic show to raise money for the writer's lab. Same thing the run is raising money for. The outfits are incredible. But I think I might wear the sausage outfit, stopping only to ponder which color bandana will work best.

Meanwhile, today's run will feature, hopefully, the Embarcadero, the Wharf, the Bridge, the Park, the Haight, and finally, the collapse. I'm going to attempt to push past the halfway mark into the 14 mile category, obliterating any notions I had of sanity previously. Part of the reason I see this as a distinct possibility is the amazing blessing in my life of health care. I don't think I told y'all that a couple weeks ago I returned to Dr. Sanders' office and have since been wearing my new running shoes. Well, despite their appearance, the pain in my feet has been reduced to almost nothing. It's amazing. She told me the piece of shit Nikes I had bought on sale were almost solely responsible for my pedal misery. I am not supposed to Just Do It with the swoosh.

In other news: Happy Birthday Harvey Milk! I imagine you often, out there somewhere, a supremely gay, brave, generous spirit continually holding the flame of dissent, the spark of uprising, and most of all, the love of each other. Thank You so much.

Love,

Sara Elise

Thank You - Led Zeppelin

2010-05-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I forgot to tell you this. No, I can believe it. I was in family mode which means all talk of things vulgar having to do with childish elimination events take precendent over everything. Including my book. But during that adventurous run in Albany, New York, the fine capitol of the Empire State, home state of our Hero Pandora and her cadre of companions, in a sweeping gust of fate, the end of my book settled upon me. I actually now know what I am writing towards. It's an amazing feeling.

All this time I have been chugging along in fits and starts, wondering if the book would ever find a plot at all. Hucking out that 75 pages and starting over, that felt incredible. The fear about it was outweighed only by the knowledge that it was the only way I could make the book survive. And now, finally, an ending. A place for Pandora to arrive. Exhausted, eternal, Pandora.

Dear Weird Running Habit I Have Developed in Middle Age,

Thanks for the salty upper lip, the aching hips, the countless hours of deeply interesting solitude, the sightseeing tour of a beautiful city, the sunrises, the courage, the pain, the peace, and all the writing inspiration. Who knew you'd end up being such a loyal mutherfucker?

Love,
Sara Elise

It's Gettin' Hectic - Gang Starr

2010-05-17T07:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I mapped out my course in a foreign land. Albany, New York. I'm here visiting my folks. This means I spend my days grazing lazily on whatever is in the refrigerator and chatting about odd popular culture facts from 1983. Things like Family Ties come up or constant quoting of John Hughes films ricochet around the kitchen, tried and true family bonding around the television we all watched together. Sometimes we even discuss the good old days of the Steelers, before free agency and expansion morphed the league forever. I digress. Here we speak of running.

Well, after boarding the redeye in San Francisco on Friday night, and after a nine hour day at work, I dozed on two flights, even though I treated myself to a soy latte in Detroit at Starbucks, the Green Beacon. I never go to that place unless I'm traveling during which the ubiquitous logo transforms itself from an eye roll to a ray of hope for me, a green beacon along lonely stretches of highway and beckoning on long moving walkways in terminals. Nonetheless, I fell right the hell back to sleep as soon as the wheels left the ground in Detroit. I figured after so much success with unconsciousness in flight, I would arrive at the homestead, do some power joshing with the folks and then have a small nap. I would awake refreshed and don my sausage attire in time for a long run and then a shower before dinner.

Of course, my subconscious understanding that I was on vacation took over and my power nap stretched its arms into a four hour stint and left me barely enough time to hose down before dinner. My brother and I plowed through a small mountain of sushi and no running was had. Sigh. So I forced myself to turn in at nine, which is only 6pm California time, thinking I might be in a little trouble what with all the sleeping I had already done. But the great beyond has gifted me with a few Very Important Skills, and sleeping through anything is one of them. I put in another eight hours on the pillow, not to brag, and hauled it out at 5:30 am, on to my normal schedule and ready to rock.

I mapped out a ten mile-ish route and hit the road. Something about running a route I've never run before is more psychologically draining than the training I have been doing at home around the marathon course. I have no landmarks to picture, no visual cues to provide comfort. I simply have the meditations and pace-counting tricks with me. And also, I have no bathrooms memorized. Now, did I mention my Dad made me a cup of coffee before I set out? Well, he did. This was so nice. Also it was strong.

Do you feel a sense of impending doom?
Good.
Off we go then.

The weather here is gorgeous. The clouds are of the cotton candy variety, huge puffy hunks peppering a clear aquamarine ocean of space above. The trees are springtime lush after rains and flowers are screaming all over the pace like unruly children. Lilacs, roses, lilies... the air is alive with amazing scents and landscaped yards show off at every street corner. I particularly love looking at the brick houses, as earthquake land doesn't showcase a whole lot of the architecture I grew up with. Something about being here, even though this has never been my hometown, provides a kind of joy, I guess is the feeling. Is it joy? It's a quiet thing, but bright. Whatever it is.

Meanwhile, I have no idea about anything on my route like I do at home. I've been doggedly staking out the marathon course and while doing so have made strides in memorizing friendly bathroom stops, drinking fountains, and combination locks for various Green Beacon loos throughout the city. Not here. All I know is that after 4.5 miles, I will come upon a hospital on my left, Albany Medical Center. It has become clear that this will be imperative to my well being. Imperative.

Hark!!! Yonder lies the clinic of angels and indoor plumbing! Somehow in this economy, the hospital has secured funding and is under a great deal of construction. So much, in fact, it takes me a little while to find the side entrance to the emergency wing. Once I am through the door I am met with not the hullabaloo of an emergency unit, but silence. Because I am not in a position to care, I wander off in search of a women's room which is, but by the grace of the goddess, right in front of me! And by a cruel twist of fate, it's locked. I try to turn it a few more times out of a dull sense of denial and of course the onset of panic does nothing to help my state. When I turn to exit the ghostly expanse into the morning in order to seek out more promising and populated fare, the door through which I came has now closed in a way matching that of the bathroom. I begin to hum Hotel California just to retain a link to my sense of the absurd while simultaneously wondering if all the sweat in my soaked bandana is simply the sweat of a slowly jogging middle aged lesbian, or if now it includes the universal sweat of elimination desperation. And ultimately, who cares?

So I focus my energy on solving my problem. A little further along the deserted wing, I stumble upon an elevator instructing me to follow it to the third floor where I will be able to to connect to the "A" wing of the hospital. The doors slide open into yet another deserted section of offices, the entryway bearing a plaque from roughly 1942. "Anesthesiology". It occurs to me that maybe some of the interns have been dipping their pens in the company ink and perhaps everyone is sleeping. Regardless, I find the bathroom, it's open, it's so deeply empty and peaceful that my experience is truly all that it can be. Triumph!!!

And now I cannot find my way out.

I wander around and around seeking the infamous "A" wing the sign spoke of, a girl in a soaked pink bandana, head to tow black spandex, red-faced and disheveled. Eventually I spy an obscure ramp down into a dark place with a tiny sign for the "A"wing. Poor advertising to no one, from a wing of nowhere. I emerge into a bustle of a massive laboratory. Huge. Every color scrubs and a legion of masks parading around in a hurry measuring blood and pathology samples and what not. No one seems to notice me at all, which in Albany is a minor miracle. The grocery store is an exercise in zoology for me in which I am gaped at like a rare marmoset, kind of friendly and cute, but curious and belonging in a cage. Arms covered in tattoos, even the palm of my hand, the folks here aren't quite used to the ink volume, while in San Francisco, I look like a Gap ad, but pudgier. Here at Albany Med, the patients should know: you are getting your money's worth. The people backstage are hard at work, crunching numbers from glass slide results and spinning bodily fluids. You are in good hands.

Finally I stop a woman in her tracks and ask how to get out. She is sporting a pink flowered shirt and solid blue pants pulling the highlights out of the flower pattern. She stop to focus on me, a stranger in a strange land and her face goes sideways. The way Gus knocks his neck to the side when I propose something he doesn't understand. Aha. She's got me registered.

And finally, I am sent out the front of the building, another labyrinth journey through hallways and past single minded medical professionals working long hours in a poorly lit structure. I emerge into the sun, a sad lady sitting on the grass crying into a cell phone. She tries to smile at me in my weird look. I smile back and begin the run home, retracing steps now a little more familiar. It's nice to have everything work out.

9.2 miles.
And a second cautionary bathroom tale of the running woman.
Maybe I should cut out the coffee in the morning?

Love,
Sara Elise.

Alone - Heart

2010-05-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

Along the path of my process here, I have been blessed by the offers of help from so many great human beings. One of the things people often offer is to run with me. I see people running together all the time. It looks like they love it. They just jog and chat and sweat and bond. And considering the folks who have offered, I would have an amazing collection of conversations to add to my list of awesome things running has provided for me.

But it turns out that at the top of that list is the opportunity for solitude. Who knew? I don't listen to music, I don't bring a phone, I don't pace by friends. It's an amazing feeling to set the world down and choose to be alone. I'm a social creature. Very social. I love people. I love the reality of them, the idea of them, their stories, their cadence and their faces. I love the puzzle of humanity and the courage. I love our failures and our inextricable need for each other. So for me, choosing the alone thing is an anomaly. But I have never really questioned that it's exactly part of the point. I ran with Beth and Chelsea once in my first 5k. Then I ran about 2 miles with Judith one time. And back to alone I ran.

It's funny how the pace of the world works on me. It wears me down, slowly, a little tooth, and I don't notice it until it hits nerves. The running holds the nerve collision off. My brain does all kinds of weird gymnastics and I get to both do the flips, and watch them. I stretch it out, like a hamstring, stiff and resistant until the heat kicks in. Everything in my mind loosens up and eventually it touches its own toes. I get to witness my tendency toward self-defeat and slowly work out an antidote. Then when I'm done running, I can take the antidote back to the world with me and use it in other situations. Most notably, writing. After a day of crappy prose, I don't have to name it crap. I can just accept that some writing is alive to be edited, not to appear on the page, but to lead me to the next crop of words that works. Like growing ground cover to work into the soil. It makes the soil better even though the vegetation itself is not food.

The aloneness also lets me actually arrive in my body. As a pudgy American woman, the world has told me for years my body is not a thing to be lived in, but a thing to ridicule and change. Being a card carrying, flag waving, out and proud feminist, I have struggled for years trying to accept that I am just fine the way I am. Albeit I've tried this from a very sedentary lifestyle, which isn't a particularly healthy way to appreciate a feminist body. That said, I think the running is making me a human who gets to live here, at home in the body. I mean, I can't believe it can do this shit. I carry around 168 pounds for about 3 hours. And the thing just keeps going. Hips, thighs, broad shoulders, all of it. I think I wouldn't really get to come to a place of friendship with this if I was distracted by companionship. Plus I get so happy when I see other zaftig women out there walking and running. We are so badass. This is what a feminist looks like, alright. Sausage outfits for everyone, I say.

And one more remarkable thing about being out there alone is this feeling of being accountable to myself first and foremost. There's no one else. No one knows where I am, really. They can't reach me. Any emergency will have to wait. It's just me. My thoughts. Some strange way to get to know myself each day. And know that I can do things I never thought I could do. Or that it never even occurred to me I would want to do.

People, make no mistake... I still don't actually like the running. But I am loving all the side effects. I never feel lonely out there. Just alone.

Love,
Sara Elise.

Show Me How To Live - Audioslave

2010-05-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

Part of the reason I ignored everyone who told me to start with a different marathon than San Francisco, (which leads me to believe some folks are laboring under the delusion that I may attempt this distance more than once) was that I had a rich fantasy about running over the Golden Gate Bridge. I imagined it over and over, warm and sunny, an easy breeze. It would be so beautiful, so absolutely serene up there. I imagined just me and a pile of endorphins chugging along in the early morning July sun, angling perfectly for a survey of my gorgeous city, smiling.

The first time I made it over was the day of the half marathon. If you recall, a big storm hit us that morning and I couldn't see much of anything. I saw the hail cutting across the sky at a sharp angle, carried in high winds into my face. I saw the diesel trucks speeding by me leaving clouds of fuel in their wakes. I saw the girders of the bridge, massive orange twists by the railings. But the weather was so bad, I had to focus entirely on my task, thereby rendering my virgin journey a relatively moot point. Which mimics other virgin experiences I've had. Not to brag.

Saturday was more like I imagined. The wind was tough, but manageable, especially with an utter lack of hail or rain and the sun shining all over the city. I couldn't believe it up there. Heading over to Marin, my brain began to register the the absolute majesty of the thing, an orange amazon beckoning to the world.

I kept thinking about this article I read about jumpers. This was back when I had a subscription to the New Yorker. I had to cancel it because it made me feel like such a slacker. It's just impossible for me to keep up with all that brain power each and every week. It felt like graduate school. But this article stayed with me, held on like a cat with it's pretty little curling claws. Not only is the Golden Gate Bridge possibly the most photographed bridge is the world, it is also the most popular place to commit suicide. In the whole wide world. And that's even with the statistics missing some folks.

I have to say, while I was up there, it seemed a little bit seductive. I had a sense of wanting something from that place, and I could see, extrapolated to its end, along with the perfect storm of despondence, isolation, or whatever group of feelings accompanies a jumper, that this place would call to a person. There might be a longing to merge with such a moment of beauty. The imagination could map out a fictional four second flight, idealize the unknown experience of the water seventy five feet down there, which from the deck doesn't actually look all that deadly. You could face the city or you could face the gate of the world, the fat Pacific with its cold massive water. I don't mean to sound morbid, but it's so gorgeous up there, it's like they built the thing just to hop from it. It seems easy. The railing isn't high, there's no barrier at all.

I remember on September 11th, I was in Boston at graduate school when I heard about how all those planes had taken off from this town I was doing time in, never a home, but a metropolitan hotel for me, really, and they had made their way to DC and New York. I didn't know anyone in DC but I knew a crapload of folks in New York. Like everyone else in America, and everyplace, I got on the phone to try and get ahold of them. I got through to my friend Eileen. She was sitting on the roof with her neighbors watching the towers. The tower, actually, by that point. They were drinking coffee, because nothing, NOTHING, interrupts the need for coffee, and watching the burning sky in the distance, watching the world change while we watched it on television. She took me down with her to get more coffee and when she came up, the tower was gone. That's how I remember that day. I don't know if that's how it happened, but I do know the elements are true: There was a roof, Eileen, height, and then a fall. With a side of coffee. A poet in my ear, I watched a screen while the western world understood just the tiniest bit about Beirut and Kabul. About the fall of Rome, about the details in a massive act of destruction and rage. About a landscape's mortality. About everyone's. Later, in an interview, Eileen would talk about the towers and watching them being built in 1970. About how everyone walked under them. "Of course we saw them falling," she said. "We all saw them falling. They were built to fall."

Is that the thing about majesty? If we can't have it, we try to merge with it? If we can't merge with it, we kill it? Is that the story of assassinations and war and empire? There is a rise, and there is a fall. Tony Soprano sang that song. Top of his lungs, the guy sang it. And on that bridge Saturday morning I could hear the chorus. Not the destruction of the beauty part, but first the urge to be it. The Kurt Cobain thing, to want to be a part of the hugest thing. That was the bridge for me. A tug below my ribs, the expanse of it there live and on foot almost excruciating, the crux of where pleasure and pain merge. The Icarus moment where flight becomes a fall.

I felt so grateful to have it, though, to have that bridge in my hometown, open to feast my eyes on, my legs, my real live fingers on orange steel, everything alive. I felt insanely alive up there when I heard it. A tiny sound at first, confusing. It sounded like a horn, but like a horn escaped from Romper Room. Not big enough for a car. And it wasn't. It was one of those little things like a ticket person's cart, or a golfer's. And it goes back and forth on the deck of the bridge with a uniformed person in it. A patrol of the deck. Looking for the jumpers. Trying to hold back their urge to merge.

May all who walk that beautiful bridge find the way to stay put on the deck and feast on the sight. May they have peace. And may they have kindness.

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Love, and more love,
Sara Elise

Working My Way Back to You - The Spinners

2010-05-05T06:41:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm well on my way back to making this thing work. I didn't know a big push like for the half marathon would take so much out of me, take so long to recover from. Each time I made an attempt to truck through it, I felt so awkward, cement shoes, as it were. There was no peace in the pacing, no rhythm of progress to find solace in. I imagine it felt the way people must react when listening to me sing: a hunt for a joy that will not be made available. The effort is there, the love of the attempt, but ultimately, the result is a hampered little train wreck of a thing, every tenth stride perhaps accurate by chance.

Saturday kicked the ass of these feelings and I was lucky enough to bid a fine welcome back to a relaxed run that made sense. The pacing was slow and easy, twelve minute miles to the second. Five miles worth. A jog through town to the bay, weaving through clots of Giants fans, all of us holding on to a snapshot of imagined victory. By the time I turned the corner to greet the Bay Bridge, the run's goal was assured. I only had one mile to go, roughly, and my pace was on point. That last mile was the antithesis of mile 13 of the race. For everything I feared, I regained acceptance. For everything I labored over, I glided through, and for everything I erected a wall about, I hacked those bricks apart. Saturday brought me the feeling of that moment where I really believed that no matter what happens on July 25th, it'll be okay. Maybe I won't be able to finish, and maybe I will, but the whole reason I started this thing was to try and do a thing I didn't believe I could do. To try it. And in this process, I have had long stretches of believing I can. It's a crazy feeling to believe in oneself. And when that feeling goes, the loss is crushing, but to have it return is so much bigger than the loss ever was.

And so I am working my way back to that moment I suppose. Or maybe I'm not. Hell, what do I know? But I am back in the saddle of meeting the challenge to learn to believe I can make the effort. I think part of that thing is showing up to be willing to fail on a fantastic scale. Nice people have told me all along that I have already succeeded, and some days that feels true. Other days I am still silently berating the clock that flashed 2:51:58 on April 11th. Some days when I tell people I ran a half marathon, my entire body feels like it is telling a lie. Because the feat is so singular, I have no practice believing I could do such a thing next to the years of practice I have of keeping time on a couch. But I did. I ran 13.1 miles.

On an incredibly difficult route.
In a monsoon.
With my period.

And when I finished, I could see no way at all to how I would make it for twice that distance.

And that's the whole thing about this undertaking. I could never see a way to how I would make that distance. The mind is a hilarious little playground. Always tricking me with its stubborn ego into believe I know anything at all. There is a distinct difference between having faith, and believing I know what will happen. Faith seems more like believing whatever happens, which I have no idea about or control over for the most part, is what is supposed to happen. The experience of thinking I can tell the future about anything, is a bit of giving over the magic of life to the routine. If I can remain in the place where I know I'm not in charge of everything, where I am not the best, where I am not the captain of the ship, maybe I have a chance to really take in the view.

So, while my runs have made their way back to a kind of comfort, I harbor major doubts about whether I can make it through a full marathon. At my pace, it will take me about 6 hours. That would give me time to watch one of my favorite movies, The Usual Suspects, three times in a row, with plenty of space to get up and make snacks. But for today, I feel happy to make the attempt.

Dear Keyser Söze,

I'm back.

Love,
Sara Elise.

Tik Tok - Kesha

2010-05-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

Today is my long run day. I have my route planned out and I am going to finish the work of it regardless of if I run, walk, or crawl. I am deep in the thick of inertia and resistance. While recovering from the half-marathon, I developed a formidable sense of fear or some other type of weird psychological block. The last time I ran, I wanted to stop after a half mile and forced myself to do sprints in an empty Blockbuster video parking lot just to get sweaty. Today, and all week, I'm afraid I can't do it. I'm afraid I'll get hurt. I'm afraid to look people in the face who have been so excited for me and so supportive and tell them it just didn't work out for me. But I want to push through this piece and get to work. I think today feels like a turning point.

I mean really,
Tick Tock, Girl.

I'm not telling you this because I feel like I'm in a dire situation or it's really super important in the scheme of life. I do however want to just lay down where I'm at in the name of being true to this process. I think it speaks to all the folks who, like me, are prone to easily get to the place of I can't do that. Because maybe I really can't, but the more probable story is if I can't do it today, I can do it at some point. I just don't know if I can do it by July 25th. Looking back now, it turns out I did set myself up for a fantastically intense challenge here.

C'est la vie.
I guess we'll see what happens in 85 little days.
That makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up
And my stomach flop over.

Nonetheless, the sausage outfit will take it's tour down 16th street today, climb what will be the last hill of July's marathon and head to the water around the ballpark where the Giants will hopefully take to the diamond and bring it on home today. I will do what I can do.

And in the interest of laying it all down, my book is in the same place as my road work. After a great tear across 25 pages of new text, I hit a wall. The sensations of approaching the page are virtually identical to those of approaching the street. The same fear, the same overwhelmed vantage point, and the same emotional vertigo gazing down the horizon at all that could go wrong. I think in some circles this is referred to as "future tripping". The advice of professionals or other folks who have been here would be to take the short view for a moment. Inhale the moment into your lungs and remain in the experience as it happens. A girl could then appreciate her health, her friends, her peculiar drive to tell a story and be filled with emotions surrounding what actually is, rather than all that may or may not come to pass. Instead of living within the experience of the always impending, wasting life on emotionally experiencing a fiction of maybe, I could simply look at the city I run through, tell the story of the moment in the text, let the marathon work itself out later, the novel unfold at its own pace, and I could just slowly return to now.

At least that's what I hear.
Hang in there with me.

Love,
Sara Elise

One, Two Step - Ciara

2010-04-26T16:32:00.000-07:00

I'm back from a fantastic experience in Santa Barbara. Not only was The Women of Color Conference amazing, not only were the students engaged and inspiring, and not only were my fellow performers brilliant, but I saw my old friends, Marisela Marquez, Monica Lopez, and Aaron Jones.

It is a fascinating thing to see loved ones from former times, reflecting back not only the time missed, but the image of what they hold in the sharpest focus: who you were then. I smoked Marlboro Reds in college, among other things, sported short hair and a revolving cast of massive overalls. Poking out from beneath the frayed ends, my legs emerged in striped tights and Doc Martens. My hair was toasted at the ends from bleach and dye and bleach and dye. I was a fired up angry person then, putting the puzzle pieces together as interlocking oppressions and identities showed themselves to be an insurmountable cultural mafia. I was furious about how the things I learned in Hebrew school were hooking up with women's studies rape statistics, how black studies civil rights shortfall were still hard at work in white America and how class struggle was still an unspeakable language. The matrix of injustice loomed in the forefront of my brain and I railed against it, my violet and green hair all burned up like my heart. I must have been so annoying, such an insufferable twit. And I'm sorry to all those customers I was mean to at the cafe. You didn't deserve it. I didn't have any kind of tools to express rage in productive ways, to channel my anger into a hikable path. I had no solutions, just lists of problems and black market pharmaceutical ecstasy on lucky saturday nights. But this past weekend, standing up there in Campbell Hall, I saw all those young women in the sea of blue seats and I remembered how it felt, to be eighteen sitting in the dark with four hundred people, the visceral desire welling up in me to find a way to write my story. Any story, really. And twenty years later, a little bit at a time, that's what I actually do.

I get to do it partly because those friends told me I could. And over the years, i've been so fortunate to continue finding people who tell me I can. And they're right. It's funny because folks talk to me about this marathon undertaking and they often say the very things I have said:

I can't even run a mile.

Yes you can.
Yes,
You can.

Maybe today you can't. Maybe it's a struggle. But you can. I mean, if you want to. And if you don't want to, well, dang, that's fine too. But you can. Just put one foot in front of the other. Run ten paces. Run ten more paces. Cut a deal with yourself to run forty. See how that feels. Then Re-cut another deal. Make yourself a mantra. Do your thing.

Write one chapter. Write another. Edit. And sometimes soon, I'll have a book. I'm starting chapter five this weekend.

Love,
Sara Elise

The Tin Man - America

2010-04-23T22:33:00.000-07:00

I would describe the recent runs as awkward. I underestimated the recovery time from the half marathon. I wish I could just get someone to be Dorothy to my Tin Man and pull out an oil can. It seems that simple. Like things are rusted up, stuck, hoping for a return to glory. I've been drinking a ton of water, mostly with lemon and cucumber slices to kick it up a notch and make a chore feel decadent. I am also still sugar-free and it appears dairy-free as well for the week. Maybe I'm turning into one of those weird eaters, uptight and annoying. I fear this. I want to be a girl who can just have fries with ranch and some ice cream and roll with it. But it doesn't feel good anymore. I daydream about kale.

The day before yesterday, the short run provided me with the return of faith. I would carry on. I felt a light returning, the dimmer switch of my endeavor slowly easing back toward the sky. I loved the feel of being sweaty again, the release of tension and the motion of still limbs. Then yesterday I got up early and set out to finish my usual 3.5 miles before work, and I couldn't make it. My hips were killing me. I had been to the chiropractor for an adjustment and she worked on them, so maybe that was it. Or maybe it was just that day. I remembered that some days are like that. The body just won't cooperate. And had my mind been more sure of it, perhaps a conversation could have ensued in which the two worked together, a give and take of slack where when the mind wanted to quit, the body would shine, proving itself the constant feat that it is, and when the body throbbed, the mind would give it a pep talk, pet its head and cheer it along. But that morning it went like this:

Body: My hips are killing me.
Mind: Yeah buddy, it seems kind of rough. How about you try eight more sets.
Body: Ok Eight's not that much.
Mind: Cool. There you go, You're doing great.
Body: Not really. Not Great.
Mind: You're really slowing down.
Body: It's all I got today.
Mind: Yeah, me too.
Body: You out?
Mind: Yeah. I think so. Take tomorrow off and I'll see you Saturday early before the long drive.
Body: Done.
Mind: And Scene.

If you're in the neighborhood at 5pm tomorrow, come see us. I'll be reading from the novel and showing photographs. Campbell Hall. On the UCSB campus. Also I'll be wearing white jeans and you know you don't want to miss that.

The Warrior - Patty Smyth

2010-04-21T12:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't done a lot of writing or running this week until today. Since the race I have run only two miles. My body still hurts, my brain is living in doubt and my will is a little bit on the flaccid side. I think the last mile of the half-marathon really changed me. It hasn't shaken my commitment to attempting the marathon in any way, but it made me sad somehow, deflated and dim, the sheen of my inner explorer wiped clean and dull.

It just really hurt.

And looking back now, I actually understand what 26.2 miles means for my body. I believe some folks are more capable of this kind of work than others. I am not a born running person. While I still believe I can train my body to accomplish this feat and do so on July 25th, I understand this journey will not be solely about this setting a goal and attaining it. I understand now that the total at check-out is going to be more than I thought. While I have the cash saved up, it might cut into my emotional vacation fund.

First of all there is the training. I will start over in earnest with another two mile trot. Soon enough my body will rebound and within a week I should be at a five mile mark for regular training runs with my long weekend runs starting at eight miles and quickly climbing to ten, twelve, fifteen and such until I am out there for about four hours at a time. I know the new shoes will help. I assume that this sort of post-acheivement malaise will lift and other feelings will flood in. I have absolute faith that spots of joy will crop up, that positivity will rear it's freckled face and that in the end, I can do this thing.

But today, right now, I frankly don't want to. It's such a long road. My knees hurt. My hips hurt. My heels hurt and I have dandruff. The irony of it is that it is likely the time off from the endorphins and the exercise are contributing to my mind's stroll in this dark little neighborhood. Once the road work settles into a routine, the whole world changes, like the light keeps knocking around for longer. I get it. But just for today, it looks so very far away and I'm having a hard time getting it up for the roadside attractions.

HOWEVER... on a great note... I have a show at my alma mater this weekend. The Gauchos of UC Santa Barbara are welcoming Sister Spit and I'll be reading from the novel in progress and showing photographs. The show is in Campbell Hall, where I took freshman English with this amazing professor twenty whole years ago. He taught The Dark Knight and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He had a thing about Heroic figures. He chain smoked on stage even after they told him he couldn't and then he'd go drink beer at the pub with students and talk about stories the way jocks get fired up about football. I wanted to write like that then, and I want to write like that now. Frank McConnell. He was a real handful, that guy. I wish I could've told him he mattered so much. But he was so beloved, maybe, just maybe, he took that with him.

Here's a tiny bit of the work from the new draft. I hope you like it.

There was no weather then. It was the time before we even had a word for weather. There was just the day and the night and a stray thunderbolt when Zeus threw a tantrum. Seasonal cold fronts and twisters and monsoons came later. This was before snow and draught and turmoil. Under a perfect sky we’d read about Orpheus in the bustling agora at the newsstand. He was just a small story then in a new zine these girls from Crete were putting out. While most of the newsstand remained awash in the latest scandals of Zeus and Hera, Persephone and I scoured the back of the stands for journals and obscure quarterlies among the paper-wrapped porn, vomitorium guides and fantastically popular Orgy Advisor. The glossy covers of Ambrosia This Week and Zeus’ self-promoting Rolling Thunder served to re-fix my thrill at my own godlessness. I wanted nothing to do with the roving clots of girls costumed in their various goddess wannabe uniforms. The Athenas had their strong points, to be sure, the home team in Athens with their very own temple to frequent. Ladies with their Aphordite poses were a flush of aesthetic bliss, but for me it was too much to strive for the impossible. And my inherent state of otherness didn’t allow for gang identification anyhow. Still so young at 128, I had at least learned that.

But I suppose if it had to be someone, for me it’d be Artemis. Her groupies had the best style, rippling arms and chests so muscular, their breasts seemed to vanish. They all went in a pack out to the forests at night like famished wolves, their shields at the ready, hauling quivers of hand tooled arrows strapped across their broad backs as if they weighed nothing. When the sun fell, the girls replaced their olive branch tiaras with hearty strips of leather they cut from a group kill, tying back the tresses they ignored during the day. The boldest of the pack hacked off their own pelts and roamed Greece in short hair that stood itself on end, a field of middle fingers toward Olympus, flipping Zeus off in his pursuit of any damsel, refusing to be any kind of woman a God would try to take in a solitary field of flowers.

It isn’t just her worshippers either. Artemis is always good to me in her visitations. She is patient, teaches me useful things for my strange life: tanning hides for long journeys into the tundra, moving through any landscape in relative silence, hand to hand combat, and of course, archery. She is never distracted by affairs of emotional entanglement, uses a pure focus on survival and duty, nothing like her twin Apollo. Yet she understands him implicitly. When they visit together, they never speak as though they are next to each other, but rather intuit the other’s language and come across as one voice. And Artemis never, NEVER, underestimates what a woman can accomplish. People say she’s a virgin, in fact the goddess of the virgin. Unlike the other lady Gods who come calling on me while I sleep, I figure she’s too busy for men. And growing up in the shadow of Zeus’ Olympus, why not? It’s always been difficult for me to understand what any woman sees in the humans who embody his example.

Persephone has her own following of girls, and like my best friend, they wear their togas too low, darken the rims of their eyes with the ash of burnt cedar, and stalk pleasure the way the Artemis girls stalk prey. These girls make batches of lavender and sandalwood oils and dab the scent on pulse points where absolutely no one should be sniffing girls their age. And they too, make their mothers nervous, provoke a feeling in the older women of fear and pride mingled in an anxiety cocktail. All mothers want their daughters to be beautiful, but not dangerous beautiful. Certainly not in a city like Athens. These girls forget that Persephone has no age, that she will remain forever at the perfection of a ripened peach. And when you live forever, the notion of consequence is a continually receding concept, always searching the sea in deeper waters.

But Persephone’s mother never treated her like a goddess, just like any other daughter. Any other bewitching, gorgeous, smoldering, perilous daughter. Demeter had, of course been around longer than her daughter, but in the Olympian culture, “longer” was so relative, it fell away within a few centuries. And while the time issue sloughed off like dry skin, the mother/daughter thing, that never budged. Demeter kept tabs on Persephone like a mortal. She always wanted to know where her daughter was going, with whom, and when she’d be home. She critiqued her outfits as too risque, knowing all the while that it would never matter what the girl wore, everyone would want her, no matter what. Persephone had found her ways of getting around it all. Lying was tried and true, stashing a whole wardrobe at Athena’s temple for adventures, and collecting lovers like chocolates across Greece. And what Persephone wanted that day, was Orpheus.

Bad to the Bone - George Thorogood & the Destroyers

2010-04-17T11:15:00.000-07:00

I haven't run one step since the race. Not one. I did make it to Dr. Sanders who assured me I have been toiling in the absolutely WRONG shoes and that I have heel spurs. What a trip. It seems the body grows bone at the bottom of the heel to compensate for a strange gait? Maybe I'm misunderstanding. There was so much information, I frankly don't exactly know what happened. What I do know is that I exited the good doctor's office with a new sexy night splint and a compression brace to wear all the time. The brace thing is like one of those apricot colored sleeves for varicose veins that you see folks wearing, peeking out of skirts swishing next to shiny walkers, or winking out from the top of a sock garter. I wore it to work all week under my socks, my toes peeking out at the end like a leg warmer, but uglier. But it's the splint that is the real show-stopper, a genuine article of flirtation. Here's a photo, although mine does not sport the ethnic print on the bands, just a nice tasteful blue solid, for which I am grateful. Even the soft voice contained in my skull will catch a reflection and snicker. Ginger found me in it on the couch last night, happily reading, and could not contain herself. She burst out laughing. In her defense, she recovered quickly from laughter to a generous type of pity, the kind where your beloved is cute while enduring humiliation, a cute just around the back entrance to monstrous. It's understandable. Look at this thing:

These items are not doing a great deal for my self esteem, so hopefully, they will do wonders for my health.

Soon I will suit up in the sausage outfit and the tight apricot ankle brace and hit the road. I have to tell you, the journey from last Sunday to today has been quite a ride. My pride has melted into a puddle of doubt, the pain of the last mile flickering across the movie screen of my brain late at night before I fall asleep. I wake up in the morning haunted and wondering how I will ever do it, build the bricks of mileage from 13.1 to 26.2. The enormity of it blinks a bright red, an impossibility in my mind, just as the 13.1 used to blink. I imagine if the one feat was possible, so is this one. But the task is daunting, a time-suck so expansive I suspect it will act as an excuse to avoid the novel. I am not quite sure I'm up to it, staggering the last four miles I imagine, down the stretch of the San Francisco Bay, half crazy with exhaustion and resentment.

A few things rally me into the spandex: my parents are flying out from Albany, NY to cheer me on. My cousin will also be on hand, and perhaps my brother. I will be raising money for RADAR, finally doing a small thing to repay the kindness that has always been the pillow I can rest my writer's head on. And finally, I will only have to do it this once, set the goal and finish a thing, an impossible thing like a hydra, wild and deadly and gorgeous. And I know, that if I can do this, I can do anything. Also, I bet Ginger will buy me dinner.

Love,
Sara Elise

Ballroom Blitz - The Sweet

2010-04-12T07:12:00.000-07:00

My instinct is to edit the hell out of my writing from yesterday here. Just pull the whole posting down and re-do it. But I will leave it as is, up here with my fragile leo ego, because it's a nice way to say to myself, it's ok that every writing day is not a victory. Just because I have a victory on the running front heaped with personal revelation and physical, mental, and spiritual breakthroughs, doesn't mean I can come sit at the keyboard and knock it out of the park. And that's the way it all goes, right? Some days are the days of the trudging. The days where you hike in the dark, short on water. You pass expansive unseen vistas, gorgeous wildlife noshing on berries by the side of your woodsy path, perfect clearings to set up you bedroll. You go ahead and miss all of it sometimes because that's part of the trip you're taking. You just can't see it all. But you slowly learn to trust, that even though you don't get everything, you do get to the next elk sighting, the following freshwater pond, the crazy red clay crag overlooking a river where salmon fight upstream. Maybe everything you miss is just a litany of pages you have to edit out to get to your best novel. Because no matter what anyone says, first drafts don't get published as is. One, because editors need to put food on the table too, and two, because the drafts are always a thing that we work from after we work to it. When I was younger, I used to think there was something about purity of how a thing gets spit up onto paper that shouldn't be messed with. That purity of first impulse should be protected at all costs. And you can see from yesterday's posting that while the content had all the material in the world for a lovely little tale, the exhausted brain was not up to the task of exploiting such goods to their fullest potential. This is totally as it should be. Writers, like all other forms of humanity, are designed to be imperfect. It's actually our job. It is not an ailment to be cured. And so together we come to the keyboard in the morning, a hot cup of coffee and a full night's sleep later and we say, God bless the first draft. Or Goddess. But bless more so the skilled editor. I will continue this writing here with no editing along the way aside from grammar and spelling. I am saving my editing energy for the book. Which in the midst of getting ready for my secret half marathon has been idling.

Don't get me wrong, this realization is not diminishing my wonderful feelings about yesterday at all. I rarely feel an unadulterated pride about anything I do without a silent backhand. For instance, Oh that was great, but you could have done this instead. Or, Really? 2:51:58? That's just not fast enough. But yesterday I did a great job of enjoying what I accomplished. I managed, in the monsoon, to keep it cute, remain elated with the finish line as it really was.

This experience brought me a great opportunity to examine a place I visit often. I suffer a lot from a thing Michelle and I have discussed over the years that we call FOMO, or The Fear of Missing Out. Maybe you do too. I say yes to too many things, afraid I'll miss the best book, the funnest party, the most adept conversationalist. I give away all my time for solitude and putzing to try and manage an acceptable wardrobe, be in on a new club opening, go to dinners I can't really afford. Then I have to work more to pay the bills. Then I have even less time. Generally it turns out I'm not missing much. Without this solitude in which to show up for my own tasks, I am provided with a huge opportunity to whack myself with the ugly stick, enraged that I have no time to write. Some days I wonder if I have replaced this time with my "healthy" task of this marathon. The training takes forever. Houras and hours on the roads of San Francisco. But you know where the valuable time REALLY goes?

Bejeweled Blitz.

I play constantly. It calms me down up to a certain point. But then, the calming mechanism will be overtaken by an obsessive impulse. And I'll click on the tab over and over staring the one-minute games in rapid fire succession. One minute. One minute. Another. And Another. Then it's a half hour later and I haven't reached some meaningless goal in the falling exploding jeweled gaming world. And I also haven't written anything in my book. Then I go dick around on Facebook. Then more Bejeweled, which actually lives inside Facebook. I'm pretty good at it by now, but who cares? Dude, Where's My Book? That's the big thing about FOMO. It's a myth like every other thing I tell myself about how I don't have time. I could make the time. I could set limits on Facebook and Bejeweled. I mean, I could at least try. But I do love that game.

Sometimes, when I am at rest, truly at rest, open to painful truths, I realize that all of it is a way to avoid the writing. Because the writing is the scariest thing. The possibility that it will fail, but also the possibility that it won't. Every success about it is also a fear. Maybe people won't read it. But also it seems terrifying that folks might do just that. But this is the nature of my mind. The way I must get to know all these fears and either accept or expel them. They are neither good nor bad. Just scenes on the side of the path. And the easiest way around them is always through them. I've tried around. I've tried around them in bongs, in cigarettes, in road trips and in rolled up dollar bills. Around is also a nice trip, don't get me wrong. I still like to look at all the pretty stamps on my emotional visa. But through them gives me more opportunity to just sit down and do the work.

Anyhoots, I still feel like a train wreck today. But my goal is to go to work anyhow, get some book time in, and then study a master. I'm reading Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping. It's my friend Amy's favorite book. And it's phenomenal. Which reminds me, can y'all suggest some other books for me for when this one is done? I got a few.

Love,
Sara Elise

The Agony and the Ecstacy: Running and Writing

Say Yes - Elliott Smith

I Try - Macy Gray

The Long and Winding Road - The Beatles

Wild Horses - The Rolling Stones

Don't Crash the Car Tonight - Mary's Danish

Black Coffee in Bed - Squeeze

As Is - Yes Alexander

Comfortably Numb-Pink Floyd

Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen

Jump Around - House of Pain

Happy Birthday Mr. President - Marilyn Monroe

Boredom - The Buzzcocks

Shine a Light - Wolf Parade

D.O.A. - Dead Moon

A Failure - Gucci Mane

Ten Feet Tall - XTC

A Small Victory - Faith No More

Dont Stop Believin' - Journey

Feeling Good - Nina Simone

Unsatisfied - The Replacements

Too Fast For Love - Motley Crue

Add It Up - Violent Femmes

You Can Do It - Ice Cube

I Feel It All - Feist

Glass of Water - Coldplay

ath·lete

sport

Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen

Hello - Oasis

Learn To Fly - Foo Fighters

The Long Run - The Eagles

Thank You - Led Zeppelin

It's Gettin' Hectic - Gang Starr

Alone - Heart

Show Me How To Live - Audioslave

Working My Way Back to You - The Spinners

Tik Tok - Kesha

One, Two Step - Ciara

The Tin Man - America

The Warrior - Patty Smyth

Bad to the Bone - George Thorogood & the Destroyers

Ballroom Blitz - The Sweet