running on viruses, powers, and the artificer's light...

okay, okay, if it's not the heat, the air conditioning, or the threat of rotating... blackouts, then it's some worm or worms flowing through our network, infecting laptops mainly; but now it all seems somewhat under control. Another weekend, another race... down-town Parry Sound on Saturday, so if you're nearby (drinking at the cottage say) come and watch us race - starts at about 430 pm.

To keep you occupied until then here is a snippet (sp?) of prose (poetry?) about my tuesday running group experience...


High Park Intervals

A summer Tuesday without rain and we gather at the edge of parking-lot sunshine, twenty or so runners waiting to get away… The people ambling towards the park restaurant just look, walk — and look, and that's what we enjoy: silence, envy?
Our workout begins with most of us talking, brief reminders of how we are. The trails, this night, are warm, soft, still humid, yet two of our women scold themselves over what they'd chosen for lunch, then my own Chicken Curry enters the conversation and I feel all the evidence of my living gets stored within my bowels. Above us, the clouds we had thought disappeared return — though not as violent, and a yellow haze looms in the city, and somewhere in our pack a pair of asthmatic lungs is already beginning to burn. We ascend the hill towards the one-way road and there is a baseball diamond bordering a bikini-clad pool. The pitcher has long white socks — is a SAINT, the batter taps his shoes, steps out of the batters' box, and behind me one of the men says, I hear endurance athletes take longer to reach orgasm. And another one asks, is that good?
The hill seems shorter on the way down and I don't bring water because I once trained with an Ethiopian named Yifter. We reach our grassy clearing where it seems a perpetual picnic is held, and there's always one kid who wants to run beside us. There's always a parent shouting the name of Ashley, Nigel, or Cody, and the kid looks at us and says I can run faster than all of you.
In the clearing we rest before the true workout begins. I don't know what time it is because I lost my watch on the long weekend, yet time doesn't seem to matter as much as my heart-rate — 160 after the first hill. I know this because I've felt it many times: it doesn't matter how many miles you've gone it's how many more there are 'til you race. And I remember I haven't been as focused as I used to, and I haven't been thinking about any philosophy, god, or church: I haven't been to a cathedral or synagogue in seven years. That was in Worms and the woman who brought me there is now married and living in Chicago. (My brother went to Chicago in June for the US Open, yet some people say, golf isn't a sport!)
I hear Rachel breathing hard behind me: we circle "the lake" in tandem though it is actually a pond — robust, grey. But tonight I won't let a woman go past me, and at the end of our loop I am slightly ahead, yet my arms are heavy, lumbering, and the coach says relax your shoulders. Then we rest again for three minutes, and sweat drifts across every ounce of our skin — and everyone but me seems to need water. The coach whistles again, once for us to go fast, twice — slow, and I think this must look funny to anyone watching and I wonder if a dog trainer would be impressed. At the end of it all a woman on a bicycle asks us where "the restaurant" is, three of us point to a road going up and she mutters, the hill, the hill…
Our coach says he once ran a final 300 in 40, then he talks about Yifter's finishing speed, and no one seems to understand how fast he really was, and no one would understand him because he only speaks sentences in Amharic. Yifter the Shifter says words like fast, fast! and faster! And I remember he once tried to tell me there are no blueberries in Ethiopia: he laughed and I didn't know what he'd meant, yet I assume we've all had fresh blueberries and ice-cream, and we've all smoked hash in a concert parking lot. We've all banged our heads and headed home without knowing…
The subway train is air-conditioned and my wet shorts are soaking the seat, a man with a clenched hand gets on at Keele Street and the skyline of a city at sunset disappears. The man walks by me with his fist close to my right eye, stops, and grabs the railing. At the last tunnel there is an exit, a staircase and another man sleeping in the orange light. Upstairs, the pizza is dry, not as hot as it should be — and I eat as I walk along a side street because the beggars and fire-trucks are too noisy on Bloor.
And I wonder why Milosz didn't write: a long row of runners' crawls along a weed-lined path. And I wonder why a woman in a green blazer is carrying two car tires out the back door of a frat house, I wonder if she has a big enough trunk. Then I see my apartment building on the corner of St. George Street — I see someone standing at the front entrance.