A little more leveled than some runs, but there were still enough ups and downs to give one emotionally sore ankles.
The first 13 kilometers were a mottle of beauty and challenge. Towering trees on both sides; sidewalks that should be having identity crises - yes they were utilitarian, but they were also an artist's conception of what a sidewalk COULD BE, spiraling around that tree and this, over the little Grimms' brook then back out roadside.
The challenges seemed to be four fold. Breath, muscle, stomach, feet. All wrapped, held, and dictated by mind.
Easy to deal with when there was just one. Out of breath - you slow down, concentrate on that problem statement, bring the pulse down and the breath follows. Legs burning from the hill but breath ok? Slow down, delve into the bag of tricks, zigzag up, or laterally run up. Stomach - not enough sugar - have some gel. Need a bathroom break - take it. Stomach upset - try and use the mind tricks to get around it. And feet. On the sidewalk, too pebbly - hit the road. Traffic comes, hit the sidewalk.
The problem is when you have more than one problem set to deal with -breath and muscle; foot and stomach. Puts you into a mind space of can't be done, hopelessness, can't meet the goal - ness. Then when you recover, back into ones problem at a time, you're a little weaker for it.
That would be the second most difficult part of the run. More than one problem PLUS - then recovered back into a non-whole, fragmented space.
The MOST difficult would not be to do with pain or the above. It would be the malaise, the can't do it it feeling - some of Dragonsloth's seed in there - but it's an undercurrent, a constant companion on the run, and sometimes even trying to radically accept it / surrender to it just makes it worse Which could indicated that I'm NOT actually accepting it.
It's the feeling of 'can't'. And the main thing, seemingly the only thing that gets me through it is to try and put the feeling into the side view mirror, not directly look at it, and just rely on dumb, strong willpower.
It's the feeling after the first 8 mins when the muscles are burning to warm up. Can't do 3 hours.
It's the feeling up the first hill - burn - can't do a long run.
Those are the short lived spikes, the longer ones are more like subtle body iron maidens, stretching me out and refusing to be resolved with a quick one-off anecdote.
That's when I'm into km 21, finding a pace, looking at the GPS and trudging on. Anesthetized by the Ipod, feeling I'm tired but over the latest hump and then BANG
I'm walking.
Check out David Darling's reference of the researcher that finds that a good deal of our 'conscious' actions seem to be put into play quite a few milliseconds before we are actually aware of 'consciously' deciding to act on them.
Like a predetermined run.
This is what I need to address in the next runs.
Run it slow, but keep running. Through the pain and the grit, and out of the self imposed predeterministic sheath.
Run Ferris run.
Showing posts with label Dragonsloth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dragonsloth. Show all posts
Monday, April 13, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Dragonsloth
It's easier from their perspective, and trying to take their perspective doesn't really get me anywhere, so I decided to try it on for myself.
"They" were the climbers and the seers, a roguish crew I had fallen in love with over the years. For the most part their genuality was aligned with the motors of the universe, and the ones that weren't - or that lost there way, or simply needed a good bitch-slap from the Kosmos so they could shake it off and join the climb in progress with a little more humility and humanity - seemed to fall away or fall in place. Context, brother.
"It" was a blue shawl that Diamond Lou Eddie had brought back from the bowels of a book store in London. He never explained what a shawl was doing in a bookstore, how he discovered it, or why he was so willing to lend it around, but that was Diamond Lou. And that,too, was the crowd. They had born-agained and est-ed and TM'd and chanted and dervished and ranted and painted and primaled and rebirthed and -ed to death; and on the other side of that death was this - a pool of wisdom they would soak or splash or all out nekkid body surf in. The point was that they were realizing the source that couldn't be split, the place before words and symbols, the place of essence - and in there, sharing was not even a concept. It was just something that was.
So I talked with the crowd through note and letter, waited for the psychic torque to kick in, and dropped in unannounced to DLE's place. He was chain smoking, and fidgeting with a project, but most of all, he was happy. The shawl was mine, no price extracted, no payment due. I caught him looking down from the apt window as i walked down the street - looked like he was laughing.
I stopped at the park bench with a book. Was fine for the first few minutes, clear, feet in the pool, aware and simultaneously a part of and apart from the book. Witness.
Then, the Dragonsloth.
Lots of different adventures in the blue shawl, so I had been told - full of thunderbolt satoris and kundalini explosions ripping the crown center apart in a kaleidoscope of blood and fuscia and lilac terrible beauty. That was theirs, this was mine. And mine was Dragonsloth.
I could never tell how quick or slow DS was capable of moving, because by the time I realized he was around, he was already IN me, pulling the lids down, sucking the vitality out through the pineal, constricting and conflating the pupils, generally slow-fucking my autonomic nervous system.
This time, however, I had the Blue Shawl of Power. The temptation was there, of course, to simply lie back in the dappled oak sunshine on the bench, pull the shawl over my face and have a nap - the only foe DS could not deal with - but I tried to act preconsciously BLINK-like, and threw it over my shoulders and THEN!
Immanent interior illumination.
Dragonsloth didn't go away. The ground of being under him lit up in a soft purple light, bathed him in it, and allowed me to see have some witness of him. Then, camera cut in from above, I swooped, sword outright, ready to possess DS through dispossessing him of his existence, but found my sword peeled back like lotus leaves; there, in the nexus, just up from the hilt, threads from the blue shawl, which grew into fingers into strands into a web that linked AND built and fed in a subtle body photosynthesis from the purple light and enclosed us both in it's embrace and now
NOW
Dragonsloth and I saw eye-to-eye. Or maybe from the same eyes.
And while I was right that taking their perspective didn't get me anywhere, it's because their and my perspective were part of the whole, and there wasn't anywhere to go in the first place.
"They" were the climbers and the seers, a roguish crew I had fallen in love with over the years. For the most part their genuality was aligned with the motors of the universe, and the ones that weren't - or that lost there way, or simply needed a good bitch-slap from the Kosmos so they could shake it off and join the climb in progress with a little more humility and humanity - seemed to fall away or fall in place. Context, brother.
"It" was a blue shawl that Diamond Lou Eddie had brought back from the bowels of a book store in London. He never explained what a shawl was doing in a bookstore, how he discovered it, or why he was so willing to lend it around, but that was Diamond Lou. And that,too, was the crowd. They had born-agained and est-ed and TM'd and chanted and dervished and ranted and painted and primaled and rebirthed and -ed to death; and on the other side of that death was this - a pool of wisdom they would soak or splash or all out nekkid body surf in. The point was that they were realizing the source that couldn't be split, the place before words and symbols, the place of essence - and in there, sharing was not even a concept. It was just something that was.
So I talked with the crowd through note and letter, waited for the psychic torque to kick in, and dropped in unannounced to DLE's place. He was chain smoking, and fidgeting with a project, but most of all, he was happy. The shawl was mine, no price extracted, no payment due. I caught him looking down from the apt window as i walked down the street - looked like he was laughing.
I stopped at the park bench with a book. Was fine for the first few minutes, clear, feet in the pool, aware and simultaneously a part of and apart from the book. Witness.
Then, the Dragonsloth.
Lots of different adventures in the blue shawl, so I had been told - full of thunderbolt satoris and kundalini explosions ripping the crown center apart in a kaleidoscope of blood and fuscia and lilac terrible beauty. That was theirs, this was mine. And mine was Dragonsloth.
I could never tell how quick or slow DS was capable of moving, because by the time I realized he was around, he was already IN me, pulling the lids down, sucking the vitality out through the pineal, constricting and conflating the pupils, generally slow-fucking my autonomic nervous system.
This time, however, I had the Blue Shawl of Power. The temptation was there, of course, to simply lie back in the dappled oak sunshine on the bench, pull the shawl over my face and have a nap - the only foe DS could not deal with - but I tried to act preconsciously BLINK-like, and threw it over my shoulders and THEN!
Immanent interior illumination.
Dragonsloth didn't go away. The ground of being under him lit up in a soft purple light, bathed him in it, and allowed me to see have some witness of him. Then, camera cut in from above, I swooped, sword outright, ready to possess DS through dispossessing him of his existence, but found my sword peeled back like lotus leaves; there, in the nexus, just up from the hilt, threads from the blue shawl, which grew into fingers into strands into a web that linked AND built and fed in a subtle body photosynthesis from the purple light and enclosed us both in it's embrace and now
NOW
Dragonsloth and I saw eye-to-eye. Or maybe from the same eyes.
And while I was right that taking their perspective didn't get me anywhere, it's because their and my perspective were part of the whole, and there wasn't anywhere to go in the first place.
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