Stay of Execution

Back, Barely

The marathon cleaned my clock.  I finished about 25 hours ago, and I've recovered a lot, and I still feel like I've been kicked down the stairs.  Brain function is at about 60%, maybe.  I walk like I just got off a horse after a long ride.  And like I have arthritis.  It's a very slow hobble, not really a walk.

I actually cried for a while between mile 25 and 26.  Sobbing.  I'm not sure why.  Partly was that I was in pain, I guess.  Partly was the realization that all I wanted in the world was to stop and I couldn't yet, not for a while longer.  I think mostly it was this feeling of having all my humanity stripped away and not really liking what was left.  What does that mean?  Well, I couldn't really think or navigate or function.  They were in the process of opening the streets back up -- they kept the course open for six hours, and I finished in about 6:03, but they were starting to pack up the course and open things up to traffic for the last three or four miles I was walking.  And having cars going by was scary because I knew I couldn't really think and I might make a poor decision about when I could cross or where I could walk.  And I was trying to walk on the sidewalk because it was safer and because there was a little more precious shade there, but that meant there were occasionally cans or trash or rocks, or worse, pedestrians.  And I could barely figure out how to step around a rock or a root.  And so when cars would go by close to me I felt desperate and scared.  And when a slow moving elderly couple was approaching me on the sidewalk and I would realize they weren't going to get out of my way I actually whimpered.  "Please," I would think, as I approached an intersection.  "Please let people be kind, and see me, because I can't really do this."  And if I passed a bus station or something and a little kid was playing on the sidewalk rolling around a toy truck, I didn't have the capacity to see that kid with kindness or gentleness, I just saw a threat and was resentful that he was even there.  I just didn't have any empathy or kindness or understanding at all, just this desperate whimpering sad self.  It was awful, and that combined with the pain I was in and the knowledge, from well-intentioned onlookers ("Less than two miles left!  You can do it!"), that I couldn't stop walking for at least what seemed an infinite twenty minutes, somehow I just discovered myself sobbing.  It didn't last too long, maybe a quarter of a mile.  I started to overtake this guy ahead of me and although I couldn't conceive of talking with him, I had the presence of mind to realize that if I was crying noticeably when I went by him he might try to ask me about it and I just wasn't able to think of words I could respond with.

After the finish I lay around on the grass for a long, long time, eating fig newtons and a banana and drinking water.  Housemate had finished about 10 minutes before me, and we both were wrecked.  We finally mustered enough energy to hobble to the car and made our way back to the place we were staying, where we slept for about 90 minutes.  We hobbled our way to a Mexican restaurant and ate, then went right back home to watch a movie in bed. 

This morning we were up at 4 to get to our plane on time.  Both of us are still pretty impaired.  We're starting to be able to think about things beyond our immediate surroundings.  But brain function is definitely still impacted.  I notice this because I'm not daydreaming, or thinking about what I'm going to do next, or forming any kind of abstract thoughts or associations triggered by what's around me.  That function is always present, but yesterday afternoon and today it's absent.  I am able to focus; I can read, I can attend to conversations and complete simple tasks.  But my brain just isn't doing the other cognitive habits -- no associations, no projections into the future or visits to the past, no cascades of thoughts that trigger other thoughts that trigger memories.  It's really quiet in here.   

Housemate and I agreed we don't yet have the capacity to figure out why this marathon kicked our butts so much.  Probably our lackadaisacal training had something to do with it.  And our lack of stretching, all season.  And our pace, I think we went out too fast, and we were cocky and energetic until about mile 16, and then dead at about mile 22.  The heat, the lack of any snacks at the water stations.  Dunno what else.  We also agreed that we were in no condition to make a decision about whether to do it again. 

Miami Bound

I capped today off by cooking dinner for a number of young attorneys in the area.  The only thing to hope for is that the cell phone camera pictures of certain folks dancing in my kitchen to Skid Row's "I Remember You'" do not surface in any professional circumstances.  For that matter, a transcript of the dinner party conversation might damage some very promising careers.  There was lots of laughter.  It was a lovely dinner. 

Tomorrow at the crack of dawn I fly to Miami, for the Toyota Prius Miami Tropical Marathon on Sunday.  I've hardly written about training for this marathon, and that's because I haven't been thinking much about it.  At this point I just want to be done with the thing.  No more training walks.  That's my whole objective.   I don't have a target time or pace or anything.  Because of the snow and the slush, we haven't been able to do any real speed training.  I can't imagine we'll come close to our half-marathon pace.  As long as I don't get food poisoning this time, and I actually get to do the marathon, I'll feel like a champ.  Plus I'm seeing two good friends in Miami.  And, of course, it's Miami, so it will be about 60 degrees warmer than it is here. 

Doubt I'll be able to write while I'm there.  Catch you on the other side. 

Bathroom Reading

Housemate and I recently had a little tussle over the magazines in the bathroom.  "Get real."  I said.  "Nobody reads these.  They're clutter."  I meant, of course, that I don't read in the bathroom, because she immediately protested.  "But I do read in there!  I like having something to read."  I shrugged and we discussed the reading materials.  Right now we have a Yale alumni magazine, a copy of The Nation, which Housemate subscribes to, and the Brad and Jennifer breakup issue of Us magazine that I bought at the supermarket checkout not long ago. 

I voted that if we were going to keep reading materials in the bathroom they should be of the Us magazine variety.  That's the only one I've touched, and in the mornings when drinking my tea and eating my oatmeal I'll wander into the bathroom to retrieve it and read it at the kitchen counter.  When Housemate moved here she used to get Entertainment Weekly, which was a tasty little treat, even if I didn't know who most of the celebrities were.  You get to know them from repeated pictures and pretty soon who they are doesn't matter, you just know they're important and you're supposed to care who they're dating now or how their bedrooms are decorated.  Housemate mentioned a magazine she read in the waiting room of a health clinic she works at monthly: Majesty.  Majesty is all about the comings and goings of royalty.  Sounds pretty good.  Every so often I'll buy an In Touch, which is preposterously bad but somehow satisfying for the bathroom.

All this reminds me that I've let my subscription to the New Yorker lapse.  It's not as bad as I feared it would feel.  I have plenty to read, and it's really a relief not to have new issues showing up before I'd finished the one from two weeks ago.  I still think, guiltily, about resubscribing, but I'm going to wait it out and see if I really miss it.  Maybe it's time to switch to Majesty.   

Never Mind

I take it all back.  The weather here stinks.  It's freezing cold and the surface of everything is dirty slush and nobody seems to remember how to drive in a snowstorm.  We're getting pounded with snow and the wind won't let up and when you go outside the cold feels like a shock every time.  Everyone has a headcold; mine is the very sneezy kind.  It's still dark way too late in the morning and way too early in the evening.  And winter will be tormenting us for at least two and a half more months. 

There are people who live in places where bougainvillea is blooming right now, where the air is warm, where oranges grow in the backyard, where you can go swimming outside after work.  Why aren't I one of those people?

UPDATE: Coming home from a game of chess in a cozy pub, I passed a big municipal plow truck that had gone off the road into a ditch.  Great. 

Contest: Tell Me Something I Don't Know

I continue to be amazed by how interesting and smart my blog readers are.  Who knew golfers ring bells?  Not me. 

So here's the game: please leave a comment telling me something I don't know.  Preferably something interesting, although my standards for what is interesting are very low.  The two that catch my eye the most will win a nifty and sentimental prize -- something unearthed in the Good Riddance Project that was just too good to throw away. 

Memory Fragment

Apropos of nothing, I suddenly had a vivid memory of a night in August of 2002, walking tipsy along the streets of Cowes, England, arm in arm with two handsome Antiguan men, a third just ahead of us.  They were old friends, joking with one another, and with me.  The cadence of their words took me a while to get used to, and their slang was different, so when I was tired and they were relaxed and talking fast it almost didn't sound like English.  But sometimes I could get into the groove and I could join in their patter with the right inflections and words, and that was happening now.  We stumbled along these narrow streets, considering going dancing, considering getting fish and chips, considering going back to the narrow cottage we were sharing with the rest of the crew.  The air was warm.  The houses were piled up next to one another, tidy and tight, with sweet little gardens in tiny yards, mini automobiles packed against the curb.  I tipped my head back but couldn't see any stars. 

Night Skiing

Last night I went cross country skiing with a friend from 8:30 until about 10:30.  It was cold, but not as bad as it's been for the past few days.  It was snowing lightly.  The full moon was shrouded in haze high above, visible but blurry.  The sky was a sort of ambient pink from the lights of the industrial areas not too far away, although we were on a golf course beside a river that was itself natural and unlit.  We had headlamps but soon found that we didn't need them. 

It was fun to be out in the dimly lit course.  The river ran silent and black beside us.  We glided along, talking and joking sometimes, sometimes separated by a hundred yards and lost in our own thoughts.  We got a little lost but muddled our way back to civilization before alarm set in.  As we crossed the golf course back to the parking lot, we came upon a wooden post in the snow with a brass bell mounted on it.  I gave it a ring for good measure -- a clear and unexpected sound in the night air.  Are there bells on every golf course?  Does golf involve bell ringing? 

How Dorky

I just wrote a short fan letter to the author of an article about a provision of the bankruptcy code.  I'm not sure quite what got into me.  But I liked the article. 

When I had lunch with a mentor of mine a few months back, he told me that a famous person (maybe Winston Churchill? I've already forgotten) used to read a book every day, and at night he would write a letter to the author.  My mentor told me this because he's tried to make it his own habit.  It sounds pretty cool to me, as an aspiration, only completely and utterly beyond my capacity to actually do. 

I'm currently reading, along with back issues of the American Bankruptcy Institute journal, Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.  It's great, and makes me feel like the commenter way back when who said they thought this blog reminded them of Bill Bryson's writing was a flatterer.  Anyway, maybe when I finish this book I'll write Bill Bryson a letter. 

All You Ever Wanted to Know About Sails

I love dropping by my dad's sailloft.  It's a fun place.  The employees are intelligent and very funny, and the conversations jump around and are always diverted into jokes where possible.  They give nicknames to one another, to customers, and to others who work in the building complex liberally.  They read the papers and comment on the news -- the big news, sure, but the obituaries and the sports pages and, especially, the story lines being developed in the daily Mark Trail comic strip.  They know all the sailing gossip.  And, of course, they are building sails all the time.  Sometimes big huge complex ones and sometimes a whole fleet's worth of identical small jibs, for a college sailing fleet or something.  It's fascinating to see the materials spread out on the cutting table or being stitched together by someone sitting in a little pit on the floor operating a sewing machine.  There are gadgets and fabrics and materials and techniques that are specialized and interesting and fun to look at.  For having grown up in and around the loft, there's a ton about designing and building sails that I don't really understand, and would like to. 

So I think it's pretty cool that the loft has started a blog.  You might enjoy it.  Sailmaking is a combination of high-tech, specialized sailing knowledge and practical, common-sense craftsmanship. 

Gnarly

I suited up for a walk around the neighborhood.  The temperature is 7.5 degrees but the wind is fierce, biting.  It feels very, very cold.  The exposed skin on my face started to hurt right away. 

Although the sky overhead was cloudy, the clouds broke near the horizon, and the setting sun lit things up with this reddish purple light.  I walked to the water and could hardly stand facing into the wind.  In places, the ground was bare where the wind tears along.  Nearby there were waist high drifts. 

Coming back toward home I came upon two young men on the porch roof of a house on my street.  They had shovels and snowboards.  While I watched one of them strapped into the snowboard and slid off the roof, dropping straight down onto a snowbank, which he boarded down into the street.  I applauded.  He shoveled a little more snow into the bank, and his buddy dropped off after him, landing well on the snowbank but wiping out into the street.  He got up laughing and wiping off snow, while the dogs and I waved goodbye and headed back to the warmth of the kitchen.