Turn around. Back again.

Never enter into an artistic collaboration where you have to be DC and they get to play Marvel.

Summer is marked by events, large and small which loom larger in the mind than others. A movie witnessed out of doors, lying on a blanket on a field in the city. The act of planting a vegetable in a large pot.

Our week began with sun, sun, and more sun. Blasting into the waves, the trauma and relief over a pair of glasses. Fishing when its much too hot. Running side-by-side without shoes.

My sister-in-law and her friend left early yesterday morning, and apparently took the sun with them. Yesterday was rainy, today has started overcast and cool, or at least cooler (it's not actually cooler, it just seems that way.)

After several days of non-stop immersion in HERE, in the grateful and absolute abandonment of THERE, this day I wonder why we are still HERE. The last day should have been Thursday, and it certainly felt like it was.

The drive out to a vacation destination may carry more memories than the drive back in, because on the way back the mind bends toward home and business.

Temperature: 78°
Barefoot run: 1 mile

Splayed into a wicker chair, safe in the air-conditioned living room, flipping through Instagram, she casts a attitudinous glare at me from above the rim of her glasses. "I'll never be able to run a mile again," she says. I tell her I'm getting suited up and she should, too.

We ran a mile, no complaints. Just breathing.

Temperature: 79°
Distance (solo w/shoes): 3 miles

Not true, she said one thing as we turned around: "I prefer running into the wind."

Last run of Topsail Beach for 2014, I began by running into the wind, heading for the first time this year north of the pier. She's right. I preferred the run out than the one back. But then, the clouds had finally broken and I was feeling the power of the sun on my back. My black-shirted back.

We depart tomorrow.

Tracking Treasure Down Playlist
Atom Bomb (Atomix 1) - Fluke
Who Wants To Be Alone - Tiesto ft. Nelly Furtado
Tracking Treasure Down - Gabriel & Dresden
It's All True - Tracey Thorn
Don't Look Back - Télépopmusik
Smile - Télépopmusik

Last spring I read Song of Spider-Man, and currently Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, and I finally get it. Julie Taymor was the epitome of early 1970s Marvel Comics, and Glen Berger was DC Comics. Or really he was like Stan Lee, accepting credit for what wasn't his. Or just a low-paid functionary of Disney. Anyway, Julie Taymor is Marvel. That's what I figured out.

You didn't run, you didn't lie, you knew I wanted just to hold you.

Land shark.

Surprised that my wife made it an entire day without a single match. Today is our anniversary, and we will celebrate by (among other events) taking in the USA v. Germany match at Gallagher's which is frequented by the American Outlaws, a USA National Soccer Team fan club. Win or lose, I am looking forward to that.

For the kids, much of our North Carolina vacations have involved Disney Channel. Last night's viewing of Teen Beach Movie made me long for the sweet, subtle sophistication of Lemonade Mouth.

"I don't think people were put here to be happy. I think if you decide to be an artist or a writer, you automatically accept the responsibility of being alone. However, after your 50 or 60 years are up you'll be able to look back and see this output that you've done that will endure long after you're gone, and will continue to fill the minds of millions of people."
- Jim Steranko (from Marvel Comics: The Untold Story)

Temperature: 78°
Distance: 3.2 miles

Rose earlier than ever today, a little past six. Wrote, read, drank coffee, and took what was the sweatiest run I have taken all week. The temperature was the same, but the sun was more fierce. Perhaps it had something to do with the tide ... the tide was high, and so I had to run in softer sand. The exertion perhaps. And I entirely forgot to eat anything again.

Ain't That Peculiar Playlist
Ain't That Peculiar * - Marvin Gaye
The Payback (Live) - James Brown
(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher - Jackie Wilson
Dancing Machine - The Jackson 5
I Never Loved a Man(The Way I Love You) - Aretha Franklin
Shotgun - Junior Walker
Never Can Say Goodbye - The Jackson 5
Try Me - James Brown
(I Know) I'm Losing You - The Temptations
Got To Get You Into My Life - Earth Wind & Fire

The girl was up until one a.m. last night, her aunt bleaching her hair. These are things you do on vacation, so she's not really up for running with me this morning but we discussed the possibility of her putting in a mile on her own when the tide goes out, and her parents are in the bar.