Emerge

Okay. So. At right you will see today's intake. High in fat, to be sure, carb heavy. But the portions have been controlled, and posting it there, at the top of the page, I have shamed myself into avoiding dropping down to the cornershop for M&Ms, Coke or Doritos. That's what I ate, and all I ate.

It's also made me keep a glass of water on my desk at all times (which I did not record.) I do not drink enough water. Right now I am enjoying Harris' Replenishing Elixir ... with a dose of pineapple juice and Grenadine to give it some flavor.

Great run. Shaking off the lethargy. My knees ache a little, though. It's getting cooler out.

Podrunner: 162 BPM - A Running Thread

Distance: 3.25 miles
Temperature: 51º
Weather: cool & dark & perfect
Weight: 159.5 lbs.

See? Mac and cheese for dinner and I still lost half a pound a weigh in. I must be doing something right.

Shattered

Sunset across the Heights. A magnificent evening run. Listening to a favorite old running mix, it was as though old smells came back to me ... training for the marathon got me in touch with the urban outdoors like nothing ever has. It was musky, with leaves and earth and pavement and exhaust, and the air was clear and cool.

Listening to: Drive: N*ke+ Original Run - The Crystal Method

Apparently I have not run to this since July 07. It's like an old friend.

Distance: 3.25 miles
Temperature: 58º
Weather: gorgeous
Scale says I'm 152 lbs., which is nice and all, but it's wrong.

Consumption

Podrunner: 132 BPM - "EASYGOING"

Distance: 3.25 miles
Temperature: 54º
Weather: lovely
Weight: 161 lbs.

Unhappy morning. Attended a reading last night, went out with Brian for one beer and a chat. Had to stop by the grocery store, in bed by 12:30. This, after several days of getting up at 5 am to sub for one of our people. Late night, sleeping in, too warm, recipe for a headache, and I got one.

Thought a nice run would help, it often does. Didn't. Rather than allowing my mind to wander over writing ideas or other pleasantries I was obsessing over political argument and just being upset about the pain shooting down through my left eyeball every time my feet hit the pavement.

I need to begin recording my diet, publicly. Knowing that I have to write it down where anyone can see it might prevent me from stealing any more of my kids' Halloween candy or buying 99 cent bags of Doritos from the cornershop.

I was so proud of the weight I lost at the beginning of the year. But that's nothing to pat myself on the back about - I was on a physical therapy program for my knee, and suffering from self-imposed privation as a result of reassessing our finances (this before the wife started working again) which apparently we've gone back to not caring about.

But regardless of what I eat, this running once a week thing does not work. My legs ache, my muscles have slackened, and I generally feel tired, unhappy and listless.

Dingbat

If you don't see it, I can't explain it to you.

To Some, Winner Is Not American Enough - NY Times 11/3/09

As soon as Mebrahtom Keflezighi, better known as Meb, won the New York City Marathon on Sunday, an uncommon sports dispute erupted online, fraught with racial and nationalistic components: Should Keflezighi’s triumph count as an American victory?

He was widely celebrated as the first American to win the New York race since 1982. Having immigrated to the United States at age 12, he is an American citizen and a product of American distance running programs at the youth, college and professional levels.

But, some said, because he was born in Eritrea, he is not really an American runner.

No, it is more important to cling to your fear and racist pride than to embrace a breath-taking national victory. There are those of us who say that suggesting the President was born in Kenya is racist hate-mongering. And there are those who say that to suggest such is racist hate-mongering. So which camp am I in if I say the "birther" story and this story are the same story?

If you are Black, you are not really American. That's the message folks. If it makes you sick, speak out.

It's telling that a story about a marathon runner reminds us that we still have a long, long way to go. - Rob Cottingham

LATER:

"He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country...Nothing against Keflezighi, but he's like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league."
-- CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell

I love this record, baby.

You do not want to read this.

Distance: 3.25 miles
Temperature: 46º
Weather: cool
Weight: 159.5 lbs.

I sh*t you not, I just took a dump and dropped a pound and a half. But come on, Pengo - pushing 160? This will not pass.

(drum fill)

Thank you.

This does not bode well for the holidays. There are already cookies on the front counter at work almost every day. Or chocolate-covered peanuts. Tomorrow there will be left over Halloween candy. I seriously have to get this under control.

On a different note ... this might be transparent to anyone paying attention, but all the whining about being a failure as a graphic artist in spite of my best intentions - especially since the resumption of my efforts in early 2007 - I have written four plays in that time ... which is four more plays than I had written in the previous five years.

Twilight Playlist
15 Step - Radiohead
Just Dance - Lady Gaga
4 Minutes - Madonna ft. Justin Timberlake
Full Moon - The Black Ghosts
Spotlight (Twilight Mix) - Mute Math
Supermassive Black Hole - Muse
Go All The Way (Into the Twilight) - Perry Farrell
Mothership (176 bpm) - Kid Beyond

Yeah? So? Shut up.

My uncomfortable relationship with art

I... want to go running again. Not like, "I should probably go out and run." No, it's more, "I really want to go outside and run. Like, right now."

Damn you, Hansen!

Thank you,
josh bxxxx

It's a sickness.

Kathleen Rooney was featured on Talk of the Nation sometime in the past year, that is when I first heard of her book, Live Nude Girl. I want to go back and listen to that entire interview, I was in and out of the car, visiting actor-teachers around town.

Her book re-entered my memory recently when I was googling a painter who has been work with Leah as a model. He took the time to give it a write-up on amazon or somewhere, and I finally did what I must do in order to get my hands on anything, I put it on my queue at the library. As my car has been in the shop for around a week, I have been on the bus a lot. I really like the bus, because when I am on the bus, I read books. I read books on the bus, and sitting in the kids' room, waiting for them to fall asleep.

I was nervous about reading this book, a memoir of her experiences working as a model, clothed and unclothed, for life drawing classes, sketching collectives, and private gigs. Which character in her story was going to most resemble me? Because there has to be one.

I don't like having hobbies. But I am resigned to drawing being my hobby. Running is my exercise, theater is my work. Drawing is something I do that makes me happy, which otherwise serves no practical purpose. Something I spend time and money on and it doesn't go anywhere, because I don't have the wherewithal to actually be very good.

It was a thrill this summer, actually, to play a character in a play who really is a professional artist. I felt sheepish when people asked how they could get a copy of my graphic novel I HATE THIS and I had to tell them I'm not actually an artist - I just played one on stage.

I played Manet on stage once, too, you know, in a play Sarah wrote. It consumed a year of my life. My year as a French pre-Impressionist painter.

When my wife gave me a gift certificate to an arts supply store in 2001 - the year Calvin was born - I went out and bought some supplies. And was afraid to use them. Eventually I asked a friend or two to sit and they did and that was very nice and they looked like cartoons and then I put them away for a few years.

In early 2007, when the marathon was over and I had not been running in some time and my job had gotten routine and I was trying to figure out what exactly it was I wanted to do with the rest of my life (my thirties coming to a swift conclusion) I asked a friend to take her clothes off for me, and she said yes, and suddenly I was drawing again.

I had drawn nudes before, going back to when I was a teenager. I destroyed those, afraid someone would find them, which is really a shame when you think about it because I think they may have been good. In any case, tear up a photograph sure, but not something you drew with your own hands.

Back then, all of my nudes were of girlfriends so the idea of doing that was tinged with sexual or romantic ideas and for a long time it was difficult to draw someone I was friends with with their clothes on without my head getting all creepy.

So I just leapt over that neuroses by asking a string of good friends to posed nude and now I have a notebook of acceptable amateur drawings. So. Good for me. I can still draw. I draw better. I am happy with my work.

Now, how this all relates to Rooney's book. Before asking good friends to disrobe and sit still for me for two hours, I did some research on how to best take care of them. It was February when I embarked, I made sure there was heat. A private place to change, a robe, clean floors. "Playing professional," as Leah once put it. Thanks, thank you for that.

So I was searching in the book for a reflection of the talentless, 40-ish dilettante who asks young women to get naked for him. And while I found a few creepers in her work, they weren't me. As with everything else I am struggling to create there is a great deal of shyness, boldness, risk-taking and harboring in dull safety. The one person she zeroes in on as someone she just doesn't respect is a guy who has artistic pretensions, but no skill. Or no style. Or no class. Or too much money for her taste.

Well, I am pretentious about a lot of things, but my drawing is certainly not one of them.

Like most non-fiction I read - and that is what I largely choose to read - I was delighted to come away feeling like I had learned something the easy way. Something I was interested in, a shallow education in art history and stories about interesting people. I am still not sure I know anything at all about her ... and as the model, maybe that was the point.

Early in the book, she describes the difference between naked and nude. Nude is, however it looks, beautiful and artistic. It is apart from whatever it is about the human mind that makes the unclothed body something "bad." Dirty. Weak.

Naked is exposed. And maybe that's why I would never post or display my drawings. Because that's me naked. And I do not like to be naked.

It's all one.

I was flying solo this weekend - as a parent, not entirely solo. The wife was taking in a preeclampsia event in Chicago (in addition to the Institute and some theater) while I took the kids to two soccer games, three birthday parties and a circus.

I'm not complaining, we had a great time. Oh, and I was there when Josh ran his first 5K.

However, I have SO MUCH GOING ON - turning in my first draft of this season's outreach tour, interviews for a brief piece I am writing for Cleveland Magazine, there are two grants due by the end of the week, two more in the middle of next month and three more after that. There are actors to supervise and a car with a major repair bill hanging over it. Sunday night, and with all this hanging over me I was jittery, irritable and in desperate need of a run.

Running is breath and blood and life. God, it felt good - bless you, Josh, I needed speed and yesterday did not cut it as my weekly (weekly?) three-miler.

I have been reading Kathleen Rooney's book about modeling (review to come, I am sure) and that in addition to some other developments have had me scribbling all weekend, after the kids go to sleep. Running, writing, drawing. All one. All life. All as necessary as caffeine and pain medication.

Podrunner: 142 BPM - A Positive Spin

Distance: 3.25 miles
Temperature: 54º
Weather: coolee-cool