The BilboGarbi Bus

Yes, I´m here in the Euskal´s biggest hub, beginning... it's a little early for jet lag, a little early for running a race, for Japanese tourists drinking Corona and smoking endless cigarettes. And last but not least a little early for the pack of "Oregonners" discussing eight plus nine, Euros, "conversion rate, huh?", and other budgetary deficiencies. A little early for the crowd of museumers mesmerized by gold sails, spiders, and stomach turning excitement, everyone agog (gug?): "Can I have a bite of yours since you had a bite of mine?" Love, so few croissants and so many calories!

I wonder how that race is going, where it ends? I wonder if they use paper cups, electronic mats, where they put them when they're done? Do I wish I was somewhere near the bottom, the front, the middle? Do I need to find a bike, or the bus to Santander and Pamplona? Anywhere else with bulls and crags?

Machinery pounds and ponders, every brick...

for anyone who has run in (or been to) Lisbon

Running the Coast


poem 6. Lisbon


They began here, Belem,
believing, (they’d discover),
long ago a plank exposed
and every step the wind cooled
was given aloft
to God and Reign. What was
the travelling mind
inspired to abjure?
What palpable whim?

Not all are men
raising the same banners
now. Crowns and medals
appear between breasts,
bridges sink so low
that a slight flick of the jaw
will enable a long indulgent
drink. Only the coarsest of sailors
doesn’t sip an entire life.

I begin here too, aground,
shivering, nothing to unearth
but the Tagus’s tide
and Henry the Navigator
demarking the last of a million
goose bumps. His compass,
pointing freely, so real
in stone because he and the clouds
could never settle these shores.

I begin with a mast and sails
tendered like rain, (sideways).
The wind is a woman with a camera
that cannot be focused,
only my jib-angled torso
moving past restaurants
advertising the “New River”
(and a monument
that doesn’t open until noon).

another sign

splendid autumn day... a few deep gray clouds, a little wind, chance of local shower, yet lots of sun and vitamins needed. easy warm-up and stretching, some strides, pliometrics and main workout:

3 x (2x800, 1 x400) on 4:30 (so decent amount of rest)

5 minutes between sets (lots of rest because the "jogger" needed it, haha :)


set 1 = (3:30, 3:28, 1:33), felt easy
set 2 = (3:26, 3:21, 1:33), still bouncing along
set 3 = (3:10, 2:54, 1:20), felt great, back tightened a bit, last 400 was solid.

wisdom? forethought maybe?

near the top of the long run's last hill a just-past-toddler girl, ignoring her mother's pleas to stay away from the road, asks me, where are you going?

time / zone

long toot around town again, and it almost felt like I was runner... even after 45 minutes there was still a little spring in my step, i was almost in "the" zone, and time did not matter...

0;24:10 -- 5.1k 1:00:00 -- 12.8k 1:17:00 -- 16.1k

windy and more cool than last time. maybe i don't like the heat?

nah.

I remember now...

why I haven't been swimming, since about last December.

After just two workouts -- and I use the term workout so very loosely ;) I can barely raise my left arm above my shoulder... sharp, pointy -- pain!!! I will try one more workout, all swim, drill and / or kick, no pull, as I think that's what is causing it, before I go to physio. Okay maybe two more workouts... then physio.

The good news is that I had a fantastic run session on Sunday morning at the new school, (it's well past the old school where touch football, beer, and doobies were being passed around), had to shimmy the lamppost and climb the fence, then sneak between the trees onto the new-new rubber track... k, i didn't really have to sneak around as I think I have "permission" to use it, but it's true there is a lamppost and a fence that is locked to keep the skateboarders, rollerbladers, dog-walkers, and ne'er-do-well kids from ruining it again.

The goal was to do the first interval very easy, say half-mar pace, the second one 10k pace, and the third somewhere between 5k pace and all out, not sure what all out is these days (except for the first set, meaning the third 1k which was a bit slow so as not to aggravate the b-a-d b-a-k so early in the workout). It was windy, a bit cool, and there was geese and poop all over the field and on parts of the track, the inside lane even, so I guess I ran a bit further than intended:

3 x 1k (4:40, 4:33, 4:18) on 5:30 -- 3mr
3 x 800 (3:40, 3:32, 3:23) on 4:30 -- 3mr
3 x 600 (2:30, 2:21, 2:13) on 3:30 -- 2mr
3 x 400 (1:35, 1:28, 1:24) on 2:30 -- 2mr
3 x 200 (:45, :41, :39) on 1:30

Not bad eh, and with my speed and forcefulness I scared those darn geese away... good circuit training afterwards and thankfully no sharp pointy pains in my lower back.

run long 2day

it was

slower than slow

south wind

hilly hot

noisy

(roads) dusty

uneven

pain?

it beats

the couch with raised feet

positioned pillow

14.2 km in 71 minutes...

once upon time...

oh yeah,

not allowed to reminesce,

once upon a time

not so long ago actually

i couldn't run

more than 20 minutes

without stopping

to stretch

or abandon the route

it beats

the heart

The Manuscript Contents

Harbouring


footprint


Running the Coast

1. Pula
2. Turku
3. Present Island
4. La Grande Motte
5. Barcelona
6. Lisbon
7. Jardim do Mar
8. Philipsburg
9. Toronto
10. Midland
11. Tiny Beaches Road
12. Collingwood
13. Owen Sound
14. Fredericton
15. Quebec
16. The Montreal Rowing Basin
17. Irun
18. Bled
19. Malta Lake, Poznan
20. Panormos
21. Lake Bernard
22. Midland (reprisal)



The Sky Harbours

Pearson
Ferihegy
Schipol
CDG
Heathrow (holding)
YFC
YUL

St. John’s
Lisbon
Funchal
Pescara
Skiathos
Pearson (reprise)
Phoenix


Salvage

1. The Wye River (2004)
2. Victoria Harbour and Port McNicoll (2004)
3. Collingwood (2003)
4. Owen Sound (2003)
5. The Bad River and The Fingerboard Islands (2003)
6. Toronto Harbour Looking West (2005)
7. Toronto Harbour Looking East (2005)
8. Halifax (2006)
9. Salvage, 20 / 25 (2000)
10. Water Street, St. John’s (2003)
11. Sept-Isles (2005)
12. Montreal from above The Lafontaine Tunnel (2005)
13. New York (2005)
14. Manhattan at Night (2006)
15. Bermuda (2005)
16. Vancouver (2006)
17. The Wye River (1972)



From a Bridge

Holiday (and everyone is gone)
what John told us at a restaurant in Santana
Concession Fog
Seen Once
Perfect View
Ride
Returning to Port
Along a North Shore Fairway, Hamilton Harbour
** * h * **
The Barber from Palermo talks about Running



ambition

back for real... my back is real

Spent some time on another space. Now back, just in time for autumn training. A half-marathon perhaps or some race in Europe. As for the lower back, it is still the same, neither good nor bad, but better when I do my exercises twice or three times daily.

Next post is poetry. Tonight is a long run.

return to the old bog

Sorry all, marshy it is, haha, some typos are worth repeating. So I've been too busy getting my book together and getting my back fixed up. As of now the book is good and the back, well I'd say I need a new spine but that would be too witty! Hopefully I will be published and racing again this year. New pics coming soon too!

nov. middle to beginning to end

yeah. oh yeah, i know what you are saying. get some coffee, dopamine. did you read that? oh yeah, ain't she sweet. she sure knows how to be a tourist, a benchmark, to defend the principle of immortality.

what if i were not-so-versimilitudinal, if the way of this world was synchronized with habitual rain, biblical floods. this is not to say i don't believe in anything less than a woman achieving her goals... i say, oh yeahh, go for it.

and you thought -- i waited how many months for this?

World Cup Pool...

Attempting to post the picks before it starts... pdf link maybe

that phukker in 6-0-7!

Turn down your $@#$ music!!!!!

this is a poem (not peom), off the cuff :)

Amid the wavering providence a better sense of an autumnal breeze,
a wish for the aching sidewalk, for the ropes that dangle along the edges
of an austere building... Who climbs here?
Concrete? Young girls scarcely aware of their adolescence,
boys with flowered shirts, black boots, hanging out at school doors,
or is it that groping actor pretending the show must always go on?
It's teaching now, September: light (emaciated) descends,
the rope swings out of necessity, out of respite for commercial-like gurus,
mentors, and therapists who lock and unlock the discarded spirit,
the import of cold unadvertised sex... Perhaps it is only those
who dream of hot rain, an open forest or a discrete library desk,
who know the wind can be framed like the painted tips
of a terraced sun. I remember a place not far from here,
a meeting was arranged then, and she said within the silence that engulfed us,
there is no theatre among the clouds. She didn't pause to look at the sky...
The motioning of her hands, first there around the knee, moved upwards,
like a spine perpetually awake, then twirling idly amongst the sutures of the skull.
I remember nothing that happened next, not even the sharp utterings of a name.
Maybe syllables, nor the combination of letters S and Z,
are not part of a dream. To think of her now
is to pass through an open window onto the tops of a tree,
onto a limb of whitewashed gargoyles soaring from a newly restored church,
a bicycle ride going from sunshine to snow, flakes filling the canals,
the human body casting itself endlessly onward,
intricate colours staked out in skin and hair, in eyes that bloom and blink...
What happens here when ropes are no longer climbed,
when there's no building to hide behind? Who will watch that cherished
adolescent flesh, that goddess in the window who doesn't need a plastic sheen?

Within me, (like fate lacking in temperature), the vision is a perpetual display,
a sign without time or place. And it arises again, with a little sound,
haze of noise and isolation, how long ago did she leave, did the empty chaos
bring me back to years that digest the soul? I've heard introductions before,
phrases that do not last, rumours: the oh-my-gods
of adolescence that everyone desires because nothing is better
than rising from the dead. Everything else, like a mountain or affection,
has an ebb greater than knowledge, a vast plucking we cannot disturb.
Yet I'm only one in a contingent of disappointed men,
a perverted involuntary group that cannot leave the hammers and scaffolds
of this old church. I only whisper to a gathering wind, years are balloons you cannot burst.
From time to time, as she would say, there is only the option of floating away,
the nudity of air and a differing false sense: a star that hangs beneath a fountain
like a goddess understanding the breadth of her own fleece. Another day has passed,
has grown within the doldrums of that same ancient myth. Another night ascends,
and somewhere, (perhaps the other side of this world), the child in her womb
is as withered as skin devoid of a dream, my face a futile sleep.


*** -- poem in progress, please return as it grows, changes, morphs -- ***
*** -- D U N perhaps? not quite as cheerful as my original intent --- ***

woman in heels, a car.

It happens so fast... morning becomes morning, then another... people turn from stone to styrofoam, the door, the floor, and the window blinds become as plain as a swishing of gravel on a country road. Somewhere the sun is also rising (Hemingway?)... and not settling on a busy urban road, a woman in a blue dress, light blue heels, jumping between two bikes into the centre lane. A woman rushing for a streetcar that has already gone by... a woman who doesn't know how close she has come to my cars' dark blue hood, its first scratch?

No idea what she was thinking, but for the second time in a week I've had someone run out in front of me forcing me to be quick with the brake... I spose it's good for both of them that I no longer drive like a teenager (did I ever?) and that I'm one of the better drivers on this planet, Malta and Poland included, lol!

That's it for today. Oh wait, almost forgot my great run workout... 6 x "the lake loop" (progressive, on varying rest, 2:05, 2:02, 2:00, 2:01, 1:58, 1:52 -- LAST ONE was a "race" with Rachael, I won, jk :) Bonsoir!

early riser... no reason for this, or any other title **he says, smirkingly**

Ha! For reasons of inexplicable affection, dreams of women in white dresses dancing on a sandy-brown arena floor, **Szia!!!** this morning amid humanity's austere reality, dark skies, floods, I've pushed away all sense of despondency... I've stepped into the black tuxedo. Does this mean happiness is an eager addition to the usual morning whirrs?

Hmmmmm.... truthfully, I'm trying to avoid the seasonal affectations that follow Labour Day? Why is there such a lack of energy here, then, now? It seems the same contemplations (regressions) rise like holiday gas prices every year at this time... you'd think I'd be shrewd enough to encourage a different feeling (feelings) *lowers his eyes briefly, but refuses to shrug the shoulders*, to sing a more ebuillent tune. And you'd think **rolling eyes severly** that the fragments of the past couldn't coalesce into a barrier that hinders light from the future, light, salience... Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, maybe I awoke too early this morning... before the end of that dream, the glorious sunrise.

* happy ending *

perhaps there's no way to deviate from lifes' normal conclusions.
nothing interesting has happened recently... a walk in the woods
is more peaceful than a television reporter repeating blurbs as stagnant
as water in New Orleans old town. what a mess this is?

what morbid aversions? I see the happy ending is only a vague myth
recounted with impractical myrth... how blissful the sides of a sandy hill
that lead to a clear unknowable lake, invisible rest... time to cease
this terminal post.

good weekend, **shrugs** (not really that bad of a mood?)

and this moment is gone...

you've taken it for what it is worth.
you've taken it for the architect of epochs, for what is granted
in that time. you look, doubtingly, at the duty of your own shelter,
at nothing more than refuge (not even what is known about the self).
they say, you "will live to an old age if you do not see
your own attraction". they feed you with love and other versions of despair.
you do not flinch. your passion is immune to the birth of a different story.
you are a body fashioned out of clay... your likeness evokes a bottomless lake,
dolphins, worms, and the victory of a daughter's handshake.
if a god or goddess abandoned you the darkest spider would not let
you hang. the unarmed mortality of "this moment", what they might call
"asking the heavens for a joyous vengeance", would see you into hiding,
into a forest or a sea, into a pocket of unopposed air... and you,
taking everything for what it is worth,
would transfer the weight of bones and fleece, golden anthems,
and you would build blossoms of fragrant silk, veins that splash
like a waterfalls' circumference. you would leave no vague uncertainty,
your charm would revolve like an endless planet...
because of the narrow path between orbits you would inherit
a mother's greatest affliction. your beauty would never suffice.
cities, towns, and revolutions would degrade
the sin of a stone monument. a thunderbolt
would show no sign of jealousy. an inscription would read,
"she has punished me for having claimed to have loved her".

*** --- directed at no-one in particular --- ***

something innocuous -- idkw -- *cough*, just pluggin' away *shrug* i guess

My Slanguage Profile

Aussie Slang: 75%
Canadian Slang: 75%
British Slang: 50%
New England Slang: 50%
Prison Slang: 25%
Victorian Slang: 25%
Southern Slang: 0%

I forget where I pulled this from... some other blog I guess...
It must mean I isn't from the south, ain't that right Saving Sweetness.
Haven't done the weird thing yet either.

creating an image, a new regime, perhaps?

`
Don't ask to compare tragedies, don't ask me for a death toll either. Don't ask for categories that have numbers fitting together like sections of an antique cabinet. Let the fin-de-siecle fuels run beneath this road... let prices rise, flood waters? I'm thinking of New Orleans now, of tsunamis past and devastating, I'm thinking I couldn't outrun any of them **wink** **groan, Irving, Julio ** So what do we regard as our immunity to suffering? Is the greater good (as some would call it) offset by the greater "bad"? What I mean is, does it matter how many people are affected by a certain event? Any loss of life, I believe, is a tragedy, any disappearance of a child, even that isn't on the front page of a newspaper, is distressing too... so what good is the hyperbolic media notion that leads every story with "... the death toll is climbing..." Is that really all that we want to know? Wasn't the tsunami bad enough when "only" 15,000 people had died...

Hmmmmm.... I think this subject is too morbid, these images too. What regime, I wonder, could I create that wouldn't have to breathe off this strangulated sensationalism... Perhaps I'm living too far away from everything... I'm too distant from any tragedy, and maybe if anything like this happened to me I would want the world to know I didn't die without counting.