tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64727400697747435372024-02-07T00:33:52.498-08:00One Wild and Precious LifeI am a criminal defense attorney, literature academic, mother of twins and wife of an amazing innovator, runner and 2013 SF Marathon Ambassador, pro-education and anti-poverty policy advocate, and proud member of the San Francisco community--living my one wild and precious life.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-47483027080539905832015-12-23T21:54:00.001-08:002015-12-23T21:54:13.222-08:00Duty, Honor, Country...and CourageIn September I went to my high school reunion. And among all the faces I was delighted to see, one stood out crystalline bright. This is my story about him.<br />
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John Milstead was our golden boy. We had lots of smart people in our class. We had plenty of great athletes. We had any number of socially gifted people too. But the way I remember it, only one person had all three to an exceptional degree, and that was John.<br />
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Everyone loved John. His smile lit every room he entered. He was kind and friendly to everyone, popular or not. We expect that from adults, but high school kids rarely make the grade. John did.<br />
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John's dream was to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Everyone knows that West Point is harder to get into than the Ivies. You can't just be smart. You have to be athletic. You have to be a leader. You have to be authentically exceptional. And because that was truly who John was, he got in. Our class, from a suburban high school in California (before there was a "Silicon Valley"), had a future West Point cadet. And no one could have deserved it more.<br />
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But then, after graduation, disaster struck. When the news came out, it was devastating: John had been in a car accident and was gravely injured. I remember visiting him in the hospital he was transported to first. Naive and uncomprehending, I brought flowers. The John lying in a hospital bed, his brother by his side, was someone I couldn't recognize. At that moment, John simply wasn't there. I went back to my car shaken to the core, wondering whether he'd come back.<br />
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As the summer wore on, a group of us visited John on a pretty regular basis. His part of the shared hospital room was covered with pictures and mementos. His West Point acceptance notice took pride of place. I think we all knew he wouldn't get there, but it was too terrible a thought to hold. Instead, we focused on what John re-learned, day to day, starting from the beginning.<br />
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There was the day we brought him a board with letters. He'd been incredibly frustrated at being unable to communicate, and by using this board, he could spell out words. With characteristic determination, he spelled out sentences, conducted conversations.<br />
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There was the day we closed the hospital room door and stood him up. The nurses would have had our heads; it wasn't time yet. But John wanted to stand, so that was that. And stand he did. And then he walked. And one day he walked out the door and went home.<br />
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As we feared, John didn't make it to West Point. That is a tragedy of authentically national proportions. But that tragedy doesn't minimize in any way what John accomplished. John graduated from college, married, and had children. He now works in a YMCA with people who have various disabilities. I have absolutely no doubt that he is an incredible teacher and mentor, motivated, as I know he is, by the original values that pulled him to West Point and then pulled him out of catastrophe: duty, honor, country. And, of course, courage beyond us all.<br />
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John, your class salutes you.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-41288694479055498432015-08-30T16:19:00.001-07:002015-08-30T16:45:57.988-07:00lost and found<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir9fn6s7HP0oCmDIcRg0xExWUYNeV7mrHqCTFXhM1bkBiObgFlDU7c-kLGB9a4Eb2OhhksHMQ2RnMoFnXnDQ_XRi0SXanx8ksl7tGao36Ss_8tarTvspZVLp3qhdwqdwNSRCaGXcxqvaBz/s1600/Wallet.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir9fn6s7HP0oCmDIcRg0xExWUYNeV7mrHqCTFXhM1bkBiObgFlDU7c-kLGB9a4Eb2OhhksHMQ2RnMoFnXnDQ_XRi0SXanx8ksl7tGao36Ss_8tarTvspZVLp3qhdwqdwNSRCaGXcxqvaBz/s320/Wallet.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I was walking to work a few weeks ago when my phone rang. It was a police officer in Milpitas.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"When did you lose your blue wallet?" he asked. Just like that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The day before my mother died. November 23," I answered. (Just like that.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Milpitas PD had found the wallet lying in a parking lot in an industrial part of town. The officer speculated that it had "gone down the rivers," and asked me whether I knew a person whose discount card was stored in the wallet. I didn't. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He said my bar card was there, and my driver's license, and several other cards. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Can you send it to me?" I asked him. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I don't think you want it back," he said. "It's pretty beat up."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Oh, but I did. I certainly did want it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It arrived a while later, looking like it does in the picture, but a little more roughed up. I opened it. Everything was there--bar card, bar association card, driver's license, insurance cards, credit cards (all of them), HSA card, Exploratorium card, library cards (SFPL and UC), random notes. Everything of mine, and a few remnants of another life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A Subway receipt from February 15, 2015, from Montague Expressway in San Jose (meatball sub and a cookie, paid with $20 cash).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A Banana Republic merchandise certificate issued to a Katharine Alfond on March 28, 2005--endorsed on the back, apparently unsuccessfully.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A green card thanking my mystery wallet-holder for celebrating Olivia's birthday at Vanguard Bingo. $5 buy-in discount if used by November 14, 2014. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A battered lottery ticket.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A Home Depot store credit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The return of my wallet triggered many more questions than it answered, of course. How and when did I lose it? I'd always thought I dropped it somewhere in the house in a state of distraction as my mother was dying, that we'd find it when we sold the house. Nope. I thought when I cleaned out our cars, I'd see it hiding under a seat. Not there either.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I remember putting on my mother's red leather jacket and driving to the pharmacy down the street to buy what turned out to be the last set of home hospice supplies we'd need. That was the last time I paid for anything until I realized I no longer had my wallet. I must have dropped it in the parking lot or left it on the ledge outside Starbucks. I'd have been too distracted to notice.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So that's probably how I lost it. But what happened next is far less explicable. When people pick up wallets, normally they either return them in some way, or take possession of them and their contents, which includes taking the things of value and ditching the wallet. But my wallet-holder didn't do either. The address on my driver's license is current, and anyone can find me through the California Bar website, so she intentionally <i>didn't</i> return it. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But she also didn't take anything or use any of the cards--two Visa cards, AmEx, Nordstrom, MasterCard (HSA). And she didn't ditch the wallet, either, at least not for several months.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Instead, my wallet-holder walked around with <i>me</i> in her pocket, undisturbed. Did she show my ID as hers? Does she look like me? Was she homeless, like the officer speculated? If so, why bother carrying a large wallet if she didn't intend to use anything it held? The wallet is beat up, indicating exposure--was its bearer ever tempted to buy a jacket, some hot coffee, a hotel room to get inside for a night?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">How did it end up lying in a parking lot in Milpitas one day in July? Was there a struggle? Or did my wallet-holder simply drop it? Why didn't someone else pick it up?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I'll never know, obviously. But I feel some amount of kinship with both the battered wallet and its wandering temporary custodian. I tried cleaning the wallet up, but it won't be the same; some degrees of loss and damage cannot be undone. And, orphaned, I've also been wandering under a new identity not entirely mine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lost, and found? No, that's too neat. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And I think this is only the first chapter. </span><br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-26444376576082237932015-08-30T14:29:00.001-07:002015-08-30T15:06:50.047-07:00A love letter to my friends without children<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dear single friends and friends without children,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Lately, more than one of you has shared with me stories of things that are said to you by married women with children. Women like me. Apparently, my tribe actually says things to you that indicate a pretended incomprehension of your state. Why are you still single? Why don't you have children? And implied: What's wrong with you? Don't you see how blessed I am? How I've made the right choice? Don't you see how safe and protected I am?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> When you tell me these things, when I hear that mothers have tried for some reason to make you think you are lesser, my heart aches for you--but I also feel angry. Because those women have no right to tell anyone how to live. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> And I want to tell you something. Children are a blessing, of course. But many things in life are a blessing. Meaningful work is a blessing. The chance to develop your talents is a blessing. Giving to others is a blessing. We are many-dimensioned creatures; parenthood is one limited dimension only, and at least for me it can never be the whole of my life. The compass of our lives is measured out in intentional participation in the world; in creativity, projects, endeavors, improvement. In love.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Children might make your life fuller. And they might not. We parents do not own our children. We bring them into the world and do our best to love them; but their thoughts and their actions are not, and never can be, ours. They are their own people, if we do our jobs correctly, just as we belong irreducibly and inalienably to ourselves. Every person is ultimately a mystery to others. Our children are no exception. Any woman who has children so that she will not die alone is a fool.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> It could well be that you feel grief because of your childless state. And if you do, my heart aches again for you, and much more sharply this time. I am so sorry for the empty space that you contemplate. And no words of mine will fill it. But I am sorry for your pain. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> We all walk an unpredictable path in this life, and parenthood does not change that. You and I are in every essential the same.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> There's something else I want to tell you. I treasure you in part precisely because you don't have children. I love my daughters, of course, but with my adult friends I want to talk about things other than the world of children. I want to know what interests and drives you, what projects you're engaged in, where you are headed. I want to know where you're going on vacation and what you're doing for fun. Yes, of course I have mom-friends with whom I talk about these things, but part of our relationship is always consumed by logistics and playdates and birthday parties. Those conversations always carry the comfort of mutual experience. But you, my single and child-free friends, are never encumbered by such things. And you and I can therefore be together without the encumbrances.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I am not defined by my children, and in some quarters of our society this is rank heresy. So be it. Virginia Woolf declared the necessity of a room of one's own and five hundred pounds, and so do I. You, my friends, are one of my keys to that room.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With my love.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mary Kelly</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-48630741092087492342014-01-03T22:18:00.000-08:002014-01-22T15:11:17.408-08:00Letter to 2014 from an Unbowed Runner<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Well hello 2014. Am I ever glad to see YOU.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Your older brother 2013 did his very best to break me, but though he gave it his all, he didn't win. I'm still here and still standing. And better: I am running, once again, and I'm smarter this time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I got benched (again) at the beginning of March. A creeping Achilles injury finally felled me on the very day I ran my first 800 and 1500. Being on the bench for six months was terribly hard. And I got benched right when I was really fit and just barely getting started with track racing. It was such a long painful road back. I could finally run again in September, but since then it's been baby steps the whole way. Only now am I finally creeping back to the 30-miles-per-week mark, a place I haven't been in nearly a year.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The inability to run was both painful and ironic. I'd been named a <a href="http://www.thesfmarathon.com/community/ambassadors/">San Francisco Marathon Ambassador</a> for 2013, but was hobbled and couldn't meaningfully participate in this incredible opportunity. Hugh Herr and I partnered with No Barriers USA to start <a href="https://nobarriers.fundraise.com/nobarriersboston">No Barriers Boston</a>, a fund to support persons who suffered amputation in the Boston Marathon bombings, but I found myself largely cut off from the community that would understand that mission better than anyone. And I continually received email updates and race reports from the <a href="http://www.impalaracingteam.org/">Impala Racing Team</a> that I love so well. Could I help fill out the masters team for an upcoming race? No, I could not. All year long, I could not.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">During a year lived out in the shadows of grave family illness and the inequality and deprivation that threaten our national equilibrium, all this whinging about such a thing as running seems even to me to be petty at best. But of the hard lessons I learned this year, one stands out: "running" is a many-dimensioned thing, affording me not only fitness and health (both physical and mental), but also a community, precious beyond expectation. Running makes my life easier, yes (in ways I do not always comprehend when the alarm goes off in the cold predawn darkness of another day of training). But running also helps me stay strong for those who need me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tonight, in the first days of the new year and on the eve of my birthday, I hope to turn a page. I'm stepping up my training, but I'm still healthy. I've been named a San Francisco Marathon Ambassador once again, to my great good fortune. No Barriers Boston awaits. So does track season. And so does all the rest of my complicated but blessedly fortunate life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And so, 2014, I'm asking you to work with me a little. I promise to do my part. All I ask is the freedom to run in the company of my friends.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Allez, hop! The road awaits!</span><br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-63646396527270012372012-12-31T15:45:00.000-08:002012-12-31T15:45:32.001-08:00Open To Injury: Everyrunner's Story<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare. --Juma Ikangaa</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> If we could imagine an Everyrunner--our running community's version of Everyman--then Everyrunner would periodically be hobbled by injury, with the actual frequency governed by wisdom or luck. Anyone who regularly laces up running shoes knows this. But as it turns out, injury harbors its own teaching.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> My own story goes something like this. I fell too in love with racing in my second year of running, and raced far too often for my level of training and weekly mileage. I ignored small injuries and pains because all I could think about was running fast--and I was very good at denial. And then I ignored a meniscus strain not long before the San Jose Half Marathon on October 7. <a href="http://onewildandpreciouslife-mkp.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-comedy-of-half-marathon-errors-or.html">I ran, with pain,</a> and still achieved a P.R. at 1:36:32--which only encouraged me to race more. On October 14, I paced the back half of the Nike Women's Marathon. And then, on October 21 came the coup de grace--I attempted the Humboldt Half Marathon, even though I had been in pain that week.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> The race started, and immediately I knew I didn't have it. My pace dipped from 7:30, to 8:00, to 8:15. The teammates I'd anticipated running with left me in their dust. I resigned myself to a training run.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> And then, at mile 7, a searing pain shot through my right calf. I was well and truly done, unable even to walk the rest of the way. The dreaded season-ending injury had arrived, cutting me out of all remaining races for 2012. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> It was three weeks before I ran again at all, thanks to the guidance of a <a href="http://www.breenrunning.com/index.html">wise friend and coach</a> who convinced me not to run in the presence of any pain, however small. The injury didn't settle in my calf--it stayed in my meniscus, which was scary. I decided that I finally needed to listen to the wisdom of those who'd been telling me I was weak in the hips and core. That weakness opened me to injury and I had to fix it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> But I had to change my orientation to my body first. Being open to injury meant that I had to think more deeply about why I'd gotten hurt if I truly wanted to heal completely. I realized that while I am a no-shortcuts, focus-on-fundamentals person, I hadn't used that approach with running. I'd tried to race too frequently, on too few miles of base, with completely inadequate stretching and strength training. I was fast, but I was weak and lazy too (harsh but true).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> So <a href="http://www.anthroposperformance.com/">I found a personal trainer</a> and started twice-weekly kettlebell and barbell workouts. And I got treated by my <a href="http://www.chiromedicalgroup.com/">chiropractor</a> and sports massage therapist. It helps that everyone on my personal team understands and supports my running goals. I also resolved to build my mileage slowly and carefully to 40 miles per week by the time my team starts training again on January 22. So far, so good.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I got injured because I failed to understand both the harsh calculus of competitive running and my own current limits. But failure is a powerful teacher. I also failed because I tried to do things I couldn't yet do, and that is the best kind of failure. You can grow stronger at the point of injury. My injury was physical, but it was also mental and spiritual. Opening a pathway from mind to spirit to body was necessary if I wanted to begin learning how to listen deeply to my body. And so being open to injury has meant rededicating myself to getting stronger, faster, and better by doing the hard work of the everyday. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Because one thing I learned is that competition is only partially about racing. Even more, competition is about showing up every day. Competition is every drill, every 5:30 a.m. alarm, every mile in the rain, every deadlift. It's every time you think you can't go any further, and then you do. It's about strength of body and mind. It's about purpose and intention and even love. And it's also about knowing when <i><b>not</b></i> to run, which is perhaps the hardest learning of all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Everyrunner carries this knowledge in her body. Now I do too, and I'm grateful.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-14552516914105217012012-10-08T14:30:00.000-07:002012-10-14T20:45:05.946-07:00A comedy of half-marathon errors; or, the newbie chronicles<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">**UPDATE** Thanks to the impeccable race management and service orientation over at SJ Rock N Roll, I actually do have an official time--1:36:32. Somehow, they went back either to hand-timing or to the cameras and pulled it out for me. Thank you SJ RNR for the official PR!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Chugging away through the streets of San Jose, I looked down at my feet at mile 5. Just that fleeting glance was enough to inform me that my half-marathon race had just turned into a remarkably well-organized and pre-routed training run, with support included. Though it was race day, at the Rock 'N Roll San Jose Half Marathon no less, I lacked one small piece of plastic that would make me into an actual racer: my D-tag.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But you know, after I had a good laugh over that, I realized that really it was par for the course. Yesterday was a great day to learn a large number of lessons, among them:</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's a little hard for the race to give you a time without that shoe tag. To the mental checklist: shoes, singlet, shorts, sunglasses, add: d-tag, number. Two short steps for race prep, one long step for official finishes.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Might not be the best idea in the world to run a half-marathon after a tough training week. Next time you do a half, remove at least one of the following from your prerace routine: Presidio Hills cross-country race; ten-mile "recovery" run with a speedy friend; killer Impala track workout, with sprints o' plenty, just two days later. (DUMMY!)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yeah, and next time you might not want to attend a benefit in Marin the night before a race in San Jose. Just maybe.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Here's a good one: when your legs feel like cement blocks would feel if they could actually hurt intensely (from mile 1, to boot), don't forget that cement blocks can still move. If you yell at them enough, they'll even move at a decent rate of speed. Just don't let the legs win. And no, you're not allowed to quit in the middle of a race, even if you won't get an official time. Nice try though.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And hey, there were so many great things about the day. Here are two: my Impala teamies Verity Breen and Megan Kossar. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The always-amazing Verity rocked it, placing tenth with a time of 1:22:44, and Megan had a great day with a PR at 1:36:07.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span> <span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The weather was spectacular--practically custom-ordered to be clear, sunny, not too hot. And especially considering how many thousands of people ran the half, the organization was terrific. Though I was in pain and struggling from mile 1, I still managed to pick up the pace in the last 5K just by force of will. And though I didn't get an official time, I know my Garmin time, and it would have been a PR at 1:36:xx (I'll get it next time!). This newbie feels tremendously lucky to be healthy and able to run 13.1 in 96 minutes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And as a final note, you gotta love my race number--F16. I enjoyed being a fighter jet for the day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span> <span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-36419387392874916852012-08-09T15:12:00.000-07:002012-08-12T09:35:46.653-07:00The House at Pooh Corner Today is my daughters' last day at preschool. After our vacation, they'll leave our immediate sphere and start their long walk away from us and toward the horizon. It's a walk we've worked very hard to prepare them for, with love, and hugs, and lots of reassurance. All the same, my heartstrings are stretched to the breaking point today.<br />
<br />
Today, my babies leave the House at Pooh Corner.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Christopher Robin and I walked along</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>under branches lit up by the moon.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Posing our questions to Owl and Eeyore</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>as our days disappeared all too soon.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>But I've wandered much further today than I should</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>and I can't seem to find my way back to the wood.</i></div>
<br />
<i></i>Last night, both girls asked for the rocking chair. It's been months since we rocked at bedtime, but they are, understandably, regressing a little. So we snuggled up and rocked, one at a time, and they told me how sad they are to leave their teachers. I reveled in the little arms clinging around my neck, and remembered our first days together in that chair. For a long time, I could rock both of them at once, one behind the other, two babies spooning on my lap. Their dear sleepy heads would lean against each other into my chest, one blondie and one brown, drifting off into baby dreams while cuddled into their twin.<br />
<br />
My baby girls are far too big to do that now, but they never stopped hugging each other and I hope they never will.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>So, help me if you can, I've got to get</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>back to the house at Pooh Corner by one.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>You'd be surprised there's so much to be done,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>count all the bees in the hive,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>chase all the clouds from the sky.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Back to the days of Christopher Robin and Pooh. </i></div>
<br />
In May of 2009, we crash-landed into San Francisco in an emergency move prompted by my mother's very serious illness. Those days are now a blur. I had transferred offices within my large law firm and had to take the California bar exam about two months after we got here; my husband was initially gone in Massachusetts half the time working on his Ph.D.; my girls were barely two; and my mother was very sick. It was a real challenge to hold everything together, and I often worried whether the chaos and stress would harm my girls. I remain convinced that St. Paul's Littlest Angels preschool, where there were fortuitously (miraculously?) two places available that terrible May, has played a tremendously significant role in ensuring that my girls came through that era as unscathed as they could be. For over three years, the same teachers--absolutely no turnover in that time--have nurtured our girls, played with them, comforted them, and loved them. I'm thinking about them today, with a heart overflowing with gratitude for their steadfastness, humor, and caring, and for being there for us all this time, day after day, with smiling faces to greet them every morning. We will all miss you.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Winnie the Pooh doesn't know what to do,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>got a honey jar stuck on his nose.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>He came to me asking help and advice</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>and from here no one knows where he goes.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>So I sent him to ask of the Owl if he's there,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>how to loosen a jar from the nose of a bear?</i></div>
<br />
Since they were babies, I've always read Pooh stories to my girls. They just love Pooh Bear, and they know I do too. Pooh is good to have around in a pinch, even if the "pinch" results from him eating too much at Rabbit's and getting stuck in the door on the way out! Mostly, Pooh is a great friend. He loves people without judging them, and always shares his honey. Among the lessons my girls learned during these peaceful, beautiful preschool years, I hope that's one they keep.<br />
<br />
My talented, brave, kind, precious little ones. Watching you leave your preschool and walk away from the House at Pooh Corner toward the amazing and unpredictable lives that await you is at once one of the saddest and one of the most inspiring moments of my life.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>It's hard to explain how a few precious things</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>seem to follow throughout all our lives.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>After all's said and done I was watching my son</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>sleeping there with my bear at his side.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>So I tucked him in, kissed him, and as I was going,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>I swear that ol' bear whispered "boy, welcome home."</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Believe me if you can I finally came</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>back to the house at Pooh Corner by one</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>and whaddya know there's so much to be done</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>count all the bees in the hive</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>chase all the clouds from the sky</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>back to the days of Christopher Robin</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>back to the ways of Christopher Robin</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>back to the days of Pooh</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
--Lyrics by Kenny Loggins</div>
<div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-11775701264189323332012-08-01T09:42:00.000-07:002012-08-02T16:49:42.433-07:00Race brain: flow and the art of runningCalm, float, detachment, immersion. One foot in front of the other, again and again, in the predawn mist. Given that it's been many years since I was last a competitive athlete, and in a different sport, I'd forgotten what race brain is like.<br />
<br />
From the points race at the 1995 collegiate national track cycling championships, I'm left with a vivid memory of sweeping from turn 3 into turn 4 just before my teammate Thia and I successfully attacked and stayed away for the rest of the race. I knew the crowd was roaring, but I couldn't hear them, and I didn't see them either. I didn't feel any pain or fatigue. The shape of the race in front of me carved itself into my brain. I felt both a hundred miles away and everywhere in the pack at once. My eyes found my teammate's. Everything was still for a moment. And then we jumped.<br />
<br />
I call that "race brain." It never operates during training, when I'm often subject to fatigue, mental reservations and self-doubt (I don't think I can make it!), random pains, distraction, you name it. I almost never have the "perfect" training session that I've heard other athletes talk about. On the bike, I used to struggle up hills. On my feet, I struggle to complete a 14-mile run at 9:30.<br />
<br />
But put me in a race, and suddenly my everyday brain flips off and my race brain comes online. Race brain is exceptionally calm, in a strange way both removed from the immediate environment and preternaturally aware of it. Race brain calculates pack placement, looks for holes to move up, monitors heart rate and breathing, evaluates pains (race brain somehow knew that the sharp calf pain I felt at about mile 5 of the SF half-marathon would resolve if I backed off a bit on Lincoln Hill, and remained unconcerned), reminds me to take water at the stops, reassures me that my arm warmers alone are enough to defeat the fog and wind on the Golden Gate Bridge before dawn even though I'm shivering. Under the influence of race brain, I ran a 1:40:58 first-half SF marathon and took second in my division, in my second half marathon ever, and almost never felt out of breath. That's not to say I didn't work hard: it was a very difficult race, and I'm not sure I could have gone any faster. But it felt controlled and smooth. Race brain was in charge.<br />
<br />
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has a more elegant term for race brain: he calls it flow. The "flow" state is characterized by immersion, absorption, and complete attention to the moment. It resembles mindfulness practice. Faced with a very difficult task, you must focus, engage creativity, and reject fear, even when fear feels like an insurance policy. <br />
<br />
I remember what it was like to let go of fear on the bike. Bicycle racing is not for the faint of heart. It's dangerous, sometimes extremely so, and to keep yourself in one piece until the finish-line sprint takes self-possession and a good dose of calm. For me, the key was not to think about it: "don't look where you don't want to go." That's not to say that I didn't think about technique, pack placement, trajectory, and line; you have to think about that stuff to avoid crashing in corners and flying off cliffs. But you have to transform a lot of that into subconscious calculation, reserving the conscious brain for several dimensions of strategy. And then the conscious body just feels, and deeply, the joy of efficient movement. It feels as close to flying as we get in this world.<br />
<br />
Letting go of fear is really different in running, but you still have to do it. Certainly, you can't crash, and we may feel relief in that. But on the other hand, unlike cycling, in running you can't coast; you get no rest. That means if you miscalculate and go out too fast, you can be cooked for miles. But if you go out too slow, you've lost your chance at peak performance. So letting go of fear means letting race brain take over and tell you how fast to go. No fear--just you, flying and flying.<br />
<br />
Now if only I could figure out how to access flow in training...let me know if you have any hints!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-9107840217094601522012-07-31T10:03:00.000-07:002012-07-31T10:08:06.505-07:00In memoriam William Whelen Biddle, 1930-2012<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I read this remembrance of my friend Bill at his memorial service, St. Mark's Cathedral, July 21, 2012.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> I met Bill in a way that will be
instantly recognizable to all of you who know Bill as an adventurer of the
mind. Bill showed up in an
upper-division Romantic poetry course that I was teaching at the University of
Washington in 1996 and proceeded to entrance everyone with his enthusiasm for
George Gordon, Lord Byron. When we got
to that part of the syllabus, I’d arrive in class, get everyone started, and
then hand it over to Bill, who would stand up and declaim the day’s Byron
reading to a classroom full of rapt teens and twenty-somethings. It took me about an hour after meeting him to
realize that Bill was the truest enthusiast of the imagination that I would
ever know.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> I
think one of the clearest signs of that enthusiasm was Bill’s utter
authenticity. He strove to uncover and
understand the heart of everything he truly loved. It wasn’t enough for him to just read
Byron. Bill wanted to walk where Byron
walked, striving with every step to understand the workings of the poet’s
mind. Bill actually attended conferences
all over the world where he delivered his own papers about Byron. That is the act of a true enthusiast, and
what’s amazing is that Bill extended the very same enthusiasm to his pursuit of
vintage Mustangs, single-malt scotch, wooden canoes, cross-country skiing, the
weather, and, most of all, the hundreds of people in his immediate and extended
circles.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> I
think Bill loved people–all kinds of people–more than he loved anything else
beyond his family. I was constantly
amazed by how instantaneously Bill could make a true friend. Everyone and everything interested him. When a friend old or new would mention a new
pursuit to him, his eyes would just light up and he’d lean forward and demand
to know every last detail. And then he
would remember them</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Because Bill truly
knew how to pay attention. He missed
nothing, particularly when it came to his natural surroundings and the people
that he loved. John Hanron describes
the way Bill saw the “incredible, infinite beauty within each tiny flower” that
John brought with him on his visits. All
of us know how closely Bill listened to us, how he shared our joys and
sorrows. “I don’t know exactly what a
prayer is,” Mary Oliver writes in her poem “The Summer Day.” “I do know how to pay attention, how to fall
down / into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, / how to be idle and
blessed. ... Tell me, what else should I have done? ... Tell me, what is it you
plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> Bill
chose to live his wild and precious life in exploration and learning, in the
company of friends and nature, in the meadows of the Methow, on the trails of
the Pacific Northwest, in the streets of Paris, on the isle of Skye. He loved, he explored, he never stopped
learning. He followed the vein of his
wild and precious life into its very heart.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> I
close with the conclusion of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, Bill’s poem if ever
there was one.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The
spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I too am not a bit tamed, I too
am untranslatable,</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I sound my barbaric yawp over the
roofs of the world.</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The last scud of day holds back
for me,</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It flings my likeness after the
rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It coaxes me to the vapor and the
dusk.</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I depart as air, I shake my white
locks at the runaway sun,</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I effuse my flesh in eddies, and
drift it in lacy jags.</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I bequeath myself to the dirt to
grow from the grass I love,</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">If you want me again look for me
under your boot-soles.</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">You will hardly know who I am or
what I mean,</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">But I shall be good health to you
nevertheless,</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">And filter and fibre your blood.</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Failing to fetch me at first keep
encouraged,</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Missing me one place search
another,</span></div>
<div class="Preformatted" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I stop somewhere waiting for you.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-16624558145875508202012-07-31T10:00:00.001-07:002012-09-10T11:02:16.382-07:00To run like water<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">And I want to tell you something about the elites on my team: they run like water. Not like loud surf, or like rushing springtime snowmelt. No--more like the quiet summer run of water over creekstones--the kind that veils its own remarkable speed within a disciplined quiet. You don't realize how fast until you look again, with more focused attention. It is a gift in many ways.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-10994492388054842322012-06-12T14:23:00.001-07:002012-06-12T14:23:41.265-07:00Consolatio naturae<div class="mbl notesBlogText clearfix">
<div>
In <em>Consolatio philosophiae</em>, the great medieval thinker Boethius considered the mysterious presence of evil in the midst of a world governed by the ultimate good--God. In prison awaiting trial and eventual execution for treason while he wrote the book, he had occasion to meditate on the nature of happiness, the fickleness of fate, and the presence and faithfulness of God. Seekers will not find happiness in wealth or worldly fame, he wrote; happiness lies only within the heart.<br />
<br />
Philosophy perhaps offers less comfort in the modern world, disrupted as it is by tweets and blogs and constant emails and the never-ending bombardment by data. Though we all are destined for the same end, we have so little time to wonder about our own significance--or lack of it--and so little opportunity to meditate on what happiness is to be found here. In the midst of life, we are in death. Boethius knew it. And it means that striving for happiness and peace is our ultimate end, however complicated and data-driven the modern path.<br />
<br />
In one era of my life, I spent all my time thinking about literature and philosophy. I can't do that anymore, so lately I have substituted <em>consolatio naturae</em>--the comfort of nature--in the form of a daily run through Golden Gate Park. This simple act has a way of calling me back to myself. I strive for calm; I so often fail. But in the early morning sunlight, the towering redwoods cast the sun into a haze of taffeta rays that looks exactly like the presence of God feels. The mist breathed out by meadows seems to embody their abiding peace. And sometimes the fog blankets the park in an audible quiet.<br />
<br />
But the cathedral of trees, blessed by the misty sun, most calls out the presence of God to me during my everyday ritual. I am alone, uninterrupted, running: the most basic and grounded motion the human body can perform. And daily I am reminded that the chaos of the mundane has no power to blot out our ultimate identity with the natural world, or the peace that lies at its heart.</div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-84922952007447563642011-04-29T12:17:00.001-07:002012-08-01T09:31:09.986-07:00Defying gravityIn the past two weeks, I've kicked up my running a notch from long runs at a mellow pace to speed work at Kezar Stadium. As I posted previously, sprinting made me unreasonably happy--giggly-happy--and that was surprising. While I often felt that way on my bike when I was racing, I didn't think I'd feel that way on my feet.<br />
<br />
I remember how I felt when my bike was an extension of my body, when riding was more comfortable than walking, when flying down a mountain descent or around the corner of a track in a full sprint felt perfectly right and perfectly terrifying in the same moment. Sprinting out of a turn on a precipitous descent is one of the very best feelings I've ever had, as if body and bike were both following my command, and that order said SPEED. Just go faster! And that is all.<br />
<br />
Why was speed, albeit sometimes death-defying, so alluring? Perhaps because I have never felt so completely alive. All energy, all focus has to be concentrated right there, right then, to maintain any control. That kind of speed defies the siren song of gravity, but it also allows you, just for a second, to brush the face of God.<br />
<br />
Sprinting on my feet, of course, doesn't involve the same death-defying thrill. It's also unlikely to land me in the emergency room--a feat that cycling actually accomplished. So why is it so reminiscent? I think it's two things. First, the entire concentration in the moment. While you're sprinting, you don't have a family, or a job, or really any responsibilities. Much as my complicated life grounds me in this world--and as thankful as I am for all that I have--sometimes I want to defy its gravity. So I run, fast--not by objective standards, but in my frame of reference, it's as much speed as I can get. I take it and ask for more.<br />
<br />
And then, there is play. How often do we adult professionals get to just play? Almost never, I'll bet. But don't you feel invigorated when you do? My 4-year-old daughters play tag, and chase, and they race each other. Can't I do that every once in a while, and collapse in breathless giggles after? I'm not sure what my running companions would do, but I might try it, just to see.<br />
<br />
And sometimes it just feels good to run, as if gravity and time and weight were nothing.<br />
<br />
<i>It's time to try defying gravity</i><br />
<i> I think I'll try defying gravity</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-55547610276234200132011-01-15T19:27:00.000-08:002011-01-15T19:54:50.999-08:00Living an intentional life<div style="text-align: left;"><style>
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</style> </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">Does living your life intentionally make it meaningful? What <i>is</i></span> <span style="font-size: small;">"intention"?</span> </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"> In 2005, gave a talk about living an intentional life to the Columbia Undergraduate Scholars Program (I serve on its Board of Advisors). I thought I'd post it here.<b> </b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><b>Address to College Scholars dinner, September 26, 2005</b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><b> </b>By Mary Kelly Persyn </div><div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">I’m a law student, but before returning to school, I taught poetry for a living. Often when I speak to an audience, I think of what poems would be appropriate to the occasion, because to me there’s something about the richness of poetic language that sets the stage for a message better than anything else.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> For you, I wanted to talk about the power of choices and the meaning of living an intentional life. And so for you, I chose a poem by Adrienne Rich, one of America’s foremost poets, who has been writing and participating in political activism for a very long time. This one is called “Inscriptions,” and you can find it in her book <i>Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems, 1991-1995</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Old backswitching road bent toward the ocean's light</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Talking of angles of vision movements a black or a red tulip</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">opening</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Times of walking across a street thinking</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">not <i>I have joined the movement</i> but <i>I am stepping in this deep current</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black;">Part of my life washing behind me terror I couldn't swim with</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black;">part of my life waiting for me a part I had no words for</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black;">I need to live each day through have them and know them all</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black;">though I can see from here where I'll be standing at the end.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">When does a life bend toward freedom? grasp its direction?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">How do you know you're not circling in pale dreams, nostalgia, </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">stagnation</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">but entering that deep current malachite, colorado</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">requiring all your strength wherever found</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">your patience and your labour</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">desire pitted against desire's inversion</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">all your mind's fortitude?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Maybe through a teacher: someone with facts with numbers with poetry</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">who wrote on the board: IN EVERY GENERATION ACTION FREES OUR DREAMS</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">[…]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">When does a life bend toward freedom? How do you know you are on the right path? Of course, the answer is: it bends toward freedom when you start understanding what the meaning of life is for you. To the extent that you consider your options carefully within the context of your own values, you are living an intentional life—one that will lead you to understand its meaning more and more as you move through it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">Wise individuals have tried to define the meaning of life since humans first stood upright. Monty Python lovers in the audience probably thought immediately of the film <i>The Meaning of Life</i>, which mercilessly parodies the very thought that life might have coherent meaning. And it’s very easy to give up on the idea and retreat into more immediate concerns, especially if you’re lucky enough to live in New York City and go to Columbia University. The meaning of life can seem almost banal in the midst of that creative explosion.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">And, of course, the meaning of life is completely personal. No one can formulate it for you, though consulting great spiritual and religious thinkers and philosophers can help. Ultimately, though, you make the meaning of your life by living intentionally.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">What does it mean to live intentionally? I can only tell you what it’s meant for me. I’ve found that three principles have helped me learn how to construct the meaning of my own life: failure; the fascination of difficulty; and attachment to a principle larger than myself.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">First, failure. Yes, failure. Failure is so painful that many people do everything they can to avoid having to confront it. Highly capable and talented people can easily find ways to not fail. Given your talent, abilities, and privileges, that includes all of you in this room. From this day forward, you can find ways to avoid risking failure if you really want to. I counsel you instead to seek out failure. Actively give yourself opportunities to fail, as frightening as that is. Scare yourself a little. Try to do what you aren’t yet able to accomplish. Take risks. And don’t let fear of failure control your life.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">Why? Because while success validates what you have done and keeps you going on the same track, failure brings you up short. Confronting and taking responsibility for your own failure makes you powerful. You might have failed because you’re just not good enough yet, or strong enough yet, or knowledgeable enough yet. It could be that you are the wrong person trying to solve a particular problem. Understanding what you need to do to improve, or understanding that you need to step aside and let someone else manage the problem for a while, is tremendously empowering because it pushes you further in your own development than you were previously able to envision. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">For example, I failed as an academic—not because I failed to get a job; I did end up with a tenure-track position after an extended sojourn on the academic job market. No, I failed because once I got the job, I couldn’t do it as well as I knew I should. Why? Because I hadn’t done my homework. I didn’t pay enough attention to the fact that I really was not cut out to be an academic. And it’s not because I didn’t have the intellectual firepower to do the work. It’s because my personality wasn’t right for it, and my skill sets are not ideally suited for it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">The costs of acknowledging such failure were enormous. I had to move back across the country from Virginia to California and find another job (I taught high school for two years). I had to endure the disappointment and pain of having trained for and participated in a very demanding profession for ten years, only to seemingly lose everything I had fought for. I had to start all over again, with all the uncertainty and worry that choosing yet another career path brought with it. It took me four years to decide finally that I would return to school and train to be a lawyer. I had to let down my advisors and mentors, who had sunk so much time and effort into developing my career. I faced a significant amount of debt without knowing how I’d pay it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">I could have taken the easy way out by staying at my private high school job. It paid well and I was near my family. But a voice inside me wouldn’t let me do that. That would have been the larger failure. It’s always a good move to fail because you tried to do too much, but the failure of trying to do too little can destroy you.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">I don’t know anyone who has accomplished great things who has not failed at some point, sometimes spectacularly. And a word to the women: men have always known this and have been undeterred by failures, especially in management and public service. Look into the careers of the great majority of elected officials and representatives, and you’ll find out they’ve lost at least one election in their lives—usually the first. Studies show that men learn from that failure and keep going, often winning on the second or third try. They never seem to pause and wonder whether they are cut out for the job; they simply try to figure out what they should do next to improve. Women are far more likely to quit after a loss, perhaps because they feel they’re not cut out for the job. I hope that your generation of women sees failure differently. I believe that, given the continually growing prevalence of women’s sports, the popularity of failure among women will continue to grow. In sports, after all, failure—losing—is the primary tool for improvement.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">So fail. If you want to have an interesting life, failure is inevitable anyway. And this isn’t some Pollyanna story—failure hurts, and it doesn’t always teach you something. But most of the time it does. Take the risk.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">Second, the fascination of what’s difficult. It won’t surprise you to hear that this is a quote from a poem by William B. Yeats. The speaker of Yeats’ poem complains about such fascination, accusing it of having distracted him from the bones and structure of the problems he has confronted. The fascination of what’s difficult, he states, has “dried the sap out of my veins, and rent / Spontaneous joy and natural content / Out of my heart.” But as the reader of the poem trying to understand the larger situation of the speaker, you see that such complaints come from the frustration of entanglement. Ultimately, the speaker returns to the simple, but can only do so because she has confronted difficulty. The greatest ideas and creations and inventions are beautifully simple, but arrived at only by untangling the skein of marvelous difficulty through which inspiration will inevitably lead you.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">Look for difficult problems to solve, because they are the ones worthy of your time and effort. You will be infuriated by them, often stumped by them, and you may fail multiple times as you try to untangle them. But there is no way that the great problems of our time will be solved by anyone who has never worked with difficulty. In a sense, seeking out the difficult is another way of thinking big. And one more thing: if you stick to the difficult, you may by turns be confused, discouraged, infuriated, or dumbfounded—but you will never, ever be bored.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">Listen again to Adrienne Rich: you know that your life bends toward freedom when you enter “that deep current malachite, colorado / requiring all your strength wherever found / your patience and your labor / desire pitted against desire’s inversion / all your mind’s fortitude”. How do you know? Look for a difficulty requiring all your strength. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">Third, a cause, principle, or value larger than myself. This is not wholly or perhaps even primarily an idealistic point, though it does encourage altruism. Living for yourself alone is essentially empty, and that way lies despair. Living for those immediately connected to you can be completely satisfying for some, but it never has been for me. Of course my family and friends are fundamentally important to me, and I hold them close. But they cannot form the entire substance of my life. Rather, there are causes and principles to which I hold that better explain the logic of my life beyond the immediate reference point of those closest to me. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">Social justice, the principle beyond myself that drives my life, is a cause that millions of people have pursued through time, and, if the human race survives far into the future, millions more will pursue it when I am dead. The call to justice is a call motivated by a belief in perfectibility, and we all know that perfect justice is an impossibility. Still we must strive for it, so that’s what I do. That goal pulls me along through very tough times when it would be so much easier to just go home and relax. I find I can’t—I have to keep going, and it isn’t because I’m indispensable. I’m not even a blip on the radar screen. I contribute what I can because <b>this is what I can do</b>. In the face of the blank annihilation of a meaningless life, this goal gives my life content because, however little I contribute, I participate in a much larger project that makes progress because I work alongside thousands of others. And that, I think, is the key not to the meaning of life, but to a meaningful life.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">And there’s a great thing about service to a goal bigger than you. It does not matter what you choose to do with your life: you can still serve justice, or whatever other goal seems paramount to you. The old saying holds an especially poignant truth in this post-9/11 age: everyone can be great because everyone can serve. Each one of you can find a way. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">The greatest spiritual and devotional writing is also poetry. The Talmud, the ancient book of Jewish wisdom made up of interpretations of the Torah, gives me the prose poem that closes my remarks.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 200%;">.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;">Now I’m going to stop, but while you’re eating and talking with your table mates, I want you to think about some things, because after dinner I’m going to ask you to talk about them briefly to the group. I’ve shared with you three things that contribute to the constantly evolving meaning of my life: failure, difficulty, and a focus outside myself. What are the factors that give meaning to your life? Here’s a hint: if you answer the question with a statement that sounds like a Hallmark card, you aren’t there yet (and believe, me I have had my own Hallmark-card struggles to define life meaningfully).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black;"> You might even think about experiences you’ve had that conclusively demonstrated to you that some aspect of existence is <b>not</b> meaningful to you. Or maybe you’ve found that one of the factors I’ve identified is also significant to you. Whatever your thoughts, please take some notes. We'll talk again in a little while.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Lucida Grande";"></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6472740069774743537.post-83879949194841548632010-10-07T22:21:00.000-07:002011-01-15T19:48:15.964-08:00One wild and precious life<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Over four and a half years ago now, a friend took his own life.</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">If you want to know what that feels like, if you want to know how that phone call sounds: imagine yourself sitting in a chair, reading the latest headlines, listening to music, talking to a friend, minding your own business. Suddenly, without warning, a shadow materializes from nothing and hits you in the gut with a baseball bat, as hard as it can, harder than you thought possible. Your desperate gasp after you hear the news is the first halting, searing breath of the rest of your life, but nothing will ever be the same.</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">My husband was very close to this person, and so I battled to insulate him from the destruction of an entire community. But I had also been close to this person's fiancee, though I spoke to her only twice after his death. My sense of guilt was sharper even than the pain that I felt for both of them.</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">I think of this now because tonight I met someone who was intimately connected to that community, years ago and all the way across the country. I understand from her eyes and voice that this is not over. She lost her fiance and the plan she thought she had for her life, because her fiance, like my husband, was in this person's intimate circle. And after the death, he just drifted away. <br />
<br />
I suppose this is the point when I could wax philosophical, but I won't. I learned far less than I had hoped from this whole experience; mostly, it was a grinding and terrible experience of grief, loss, devastation, shock. Mourning. In it I recognized crushing despair, the antithesis of any joy or creativity held within this life. <br />
<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">One month later, I was pregnant with twin girls. Was this coincidence, or the universe laughing? How can I know? </div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">But a few things I know for sure: my husband is still here, and my girls are nearly four, three reasons to cling all the more stubbornly to life. I know that death will not fail in its presence. I felt the baseball bat in my gut again in April 2009, when my mother was diagnosed with advanced cancer. And the first desperate gasp after that blow was the breath that introduced me to the rest of my permanently-altered life. Death, and life: joy, creativity, love, an unfailing commitment to something larger than myself. </div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">One wild and precious life.</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">...It's not of aging </div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">anymore and its desire</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">which is of course unending</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">it's of dying young or old</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">in full desire</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Remember me . . . . O, O, O,</i></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>O, remember me</i></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>these vivid stricken cells</i></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>precarious living marrow</i></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>this my labyrinthine filmic brain</i></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>this my dreaded blood</i></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>this my irreplaceable</i></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>footprint vanishing from the air</i></div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">dying in full desire</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">thirsting for the coldest water</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">hungering for hottest food</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">gazing into the wildest light . . . </div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">These are the extremes I stoke </div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">into the updraft of this life</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">still roaring</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> into thinnest air</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div>--Adrienne Rich, "Inscriptions," <i style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Dark Fields of the Republic</i></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10791690953496514569noreply@blogger.com0