Lurkers, I've waited patiently for this particular feeling for 6 years, and today I find myself face-to-face with half enjoyment. When I look at the past, I see not the best of what once was, but a flower with mistakes for petals. I now see the future from that memory's perspective. I now bloom out of beggarly soil.
I've been racing against the clock for 1 year now, and today I beat it half-full. Roughly 1188 days left to listen to the world, to shout with excitement, to take risks, to show courage, to have fun. Tag a long if you see me at the lake. No matter what standard the Olympic Trials want, we'll brush our clothes with a smile.
Peace from a point in the day where I can hear my own breath.
Muta est (mute one) began as a form of running silently throughout these capitalistic days in order to absorb all the interactions of myself with this "reality" capitalism presents in order to revolt. Historically, I've never been one to participate in the external cinematic diatribes presented in everyday life. The pseudocommunication forms this society unwillingly creates hasn't really convinced me to partake, but I desperately wish to bring change to these forms of culture and politics, and attempt to adjust how capitalism mediates apathy and revolution, at least for me.
I propose an unorganized running guild that wishes to not be malnourished consciously. To listen, but to conduct our own experiments. To practice alleviating ourselves from our own systematic way of thinking, and embrace the dérive.
Everyday I run, I am closer to bringing myself to life, and to participate in it equally with mypersonality.
Readers, there are days when it doesn't feel like I've thought about anything productive. So I ask myself this afternoon, who's in charge?
The following stimulus was presented symmetrically over the span of 14 days:
I currently find myself exiting the last day, Sunday the 24th, scratching my chin in hesitancy. The question for me is how do I continue to grow asymmetrically? Adaptation seems to have put a bind on my physiology this past year, and one must wish to break away from one's triple-knot.
Today I took a deep breathe of this humid air, and second guessed my capabilities to run longer. Perhaps tomorrow I will breathe more smoothly.
To write to keep this brain at least dimly lit tonight - that is the mission for such a quiet night. Tonight I hear pieces of metallic clanking, only, they are not outside my apartment patio, and not sounds of anything external, they are little pops of sounds coming from the shifting parts of a staunch brain.
In efforts to tighten the lax construction arrangements of my life, I've put together a tentative syllabus for two new experiences that'll hopefully remain unaffected by the 'rona pandemic. 1) The DRC Half and 2) 8-mile Turkey Trot.
Rest of 2020
With every new model, new themes must be webbed in the draft! For the upcoming months, memory and discipline will be spun around with the rhythms of my crooked hips. In order of appearance, it seems to me that involuntary memory will be inescapable of the many sensory experiences such as old routes, old paces, and old funky smells. I won't be able to help but amble in awe the showcases I am now allowed to see thanks to chronological age. Perhaps the moment I raise my finger to tap the glass of remembrance, I'll be able to quickly remember to diverge my attention back to the present. But I am human, and architecture of personal blunder can be quite intriguing.
Secondly, discipline here will be looked at a magnification closer in the frame of disciplinary logic. Such framework for how a running plan should be is not to be reinforced, but to be repeatedly challenged, criticized, and problematized. While I wish to write more on the subject, dinner time is approaching so I will try to summarize. What I have above is a tentative syllabus to guide me to the DRC Half, and the 8-mile TT split into 3 periods: Fundamental, Special, and Specific. However, as I look at this, we have here an example of disciplinary logic. I should not be following this stiffly, but problematizing the formation of this knowledge I have gathered over the years, and seeing how it has become an instrument of control that has the potential to normalize my performance (for example, underperform). I must try to disrupt the regime as much as I can according to how my body feels, and not prescribed workouts, periods, times, benchmarks. I wish to write more, but the tummy seems to be prowling.
This time I will be more engaged and connected. This time I'll ask more open-ended question. This time I will challenge those who shape me.
It's been about 19 days since I've been circling like a ghost from my room to the kitchen grabbing iced animal cookies. Perhaps being under these artificial lights dehydrates me into hunger.
As the coronavirus floats to the summit of my novel fears, I thought about a few things today on my neighborhood run:
2 mile easy + 13 x ~300m hill repeats + 1.5 mile easy (no humans besides E)
This shake on normalcy has brought about an uneasy feeling to my often self-criticized normalized training. The need to control every portion of my regimen has created a too high, too thick dam of stiffness that slowly curates a precise way of thinking. At times, I can't help but remember the limitless that comes with naivete.
Normalcy should be critiqued as much as possible, and when imprecise distributions are seen, we should embrace them. Yet, a pang of embarrassment weakens me when I note the stresses and anxieties I experience when I am unable to adapt to such natural disruptions in my regimen. But what can you expect, I am a product of this routine-controlling culture, and it takes patience to think and stray away. As a participant of life, I must keep both eyes peeled of such hegemony in order to jig when we are taught to run.
Somehow I still don't feel like I adequately explained myself, but perhaps it's because I've been on this screen for too long. As the note-taking become denser, I hope to share polished conclusions I've come up with.
This theme has continuously flashed onto me sporadically throughout my life. And it confuses me in the following form: how long has it been since I've been unable to see my memories? This state of fraught for my memory, if you can imagine, is like writing on a page and finding it again, only to see that it has been scribbled over. I am awake when I run. I recall several memories and can feel happiness above tiredness. But this deplorable reality in which many of us live in creates a vision field of wearisome, and I suppose that is why when I don't run, my memories dilute. The sad thing is that I reinforce this blindness by participating in stringent activities. At this moment, it's difficult for me to contend in a game of diatribes with my own fears and anxieties to be free from being a multiple of this culture.
It is inevitable. And I suppose my current condition could be of some angled help. Only by participating in this culture could I ever understand how I, and others, reinforce the status quo.
Today I ran 14 miles in 1:44:30 with a crummy right ankle.
Today I finally feel something different. Proud! Clear! Fulfilled! Attentive! I could let out a sigh of relief and fall backwards in peace.
For the past couple of weeks my brain had been feeling inactive. I've sat inside a bell jar, watching the water from the sink faucet wash away the beans from my dishes, but nothing beyond that. Watching city drivers no longer afraid to die spread irritation to others, but nothing beyond that. Watching the grass wave as I stretch before a run, but nothing beyond that. Mental inactivity tried to subdue me, but I could never let it.
Today, the sights and feelings are vivid. Long runs have turned into a quest to find the present.
Finding direction within personal diatribes and uncertainties is a conundrum just as we ask ourselves why entitlement can't be snipped out of brains.
Recognizing myself, my sunny and self-slumping habits, is what I've been trying to attend to on these blooming '20 days. We're taking field notes all the way up until February or March, and making decisions on what is worth nourishing and what must be put on hold (for now).
The reason for aiming for the top is to infiltrate it. I'd like to see it, but I don't wish to snap a blink alone. This field of cognitive flowers is too big and erratic for one person to understand it all. If I could, at the bare minimum, do my part to cultivate this invisible ejido with other timid hooligans, and make something special, something that is fueled by sidereal causes, something that one feels insane for, a space of some sort to think about the world, I think a sense of contentment will balance the angst. There must be other reasons for being at the top besides blabbering about personal achievements, and quoting people at the bottom of yourself.
Remind me again, can I exemplify the pieces of my mind that flash through me? Note-taking on myself allows me to form these pieces that I watch behind my eyes out of syntax. To daydream, remember, and reflect on these bits of stimulation for me is pleasantly screened through running. Moving through the lake, the Katy Trail, and Germany Park, allow my consciousness to stream through unfiltered vessels. I feel replays of moments, words, images that haven't happened yet spiral and bounce in me, but I cannot blink fast enough to wake up and encode it.
It is why etching visions into this world requires one not to ruminate into a slumber. Being outside frees me of rumination and kadupul flowers. The time I set aside last year to create was insufficient. The current day is an excellent time to prepare for cultivation of these ideatums. I must do something real as I try to understand myself and others.
