His Hands

His Hands

she told him

not to hide his hands

but a life of work

had left their marks

so she said his hands

were tough

hardened

hands that knew

work

hands that knew

her skin

deftly

she said his hands

were gentle though

leaving her comfortable

an uncommon softness

to cover the tough

so she’d surrender

to the naked after

as she felt his hands

and she’d notice

the remnants left

beneath the nails

she said she didn’t mind

hands get dirty sometimes

his hands weren’t afraid

so she’d lay still

squeezing time

she felt his hands

she said too much

she couldn’t stop

so she said his hands

were strong

yielding a safeness

his hands could hold

so she left herself bare

and she left words unsaid

his hands knew

and she’d lay awhile

lingering

she said this wasn’t

like her

she said she’d miss

his hands

It's been awhile since I posted a poem so here one is. I'll leave it without explanation. Sadly, my hands are growing soft from the lack of manual labor. I do look forward to really working again and toughening my hands.

A 10 Year Anniversary, Time Flies When Your Having Fun?

good-bye

nothing dramatic

basically numb like days before

this day; came, and went

though I seemed to have missed it’s passing

this waiting for words

she packed a few things

gradually more disappeared

there never really was a day

when everything was finally gone

for I’m still here,

at least somewhat

the product of

this slow erosion

the disappearing of days

where time doesn’t heal

time, only yields a slow digression

a stripped down affiliation

marked only by the absences,

no harsh words

time leaves no yelling

just a mute leaving

the consequence of

an accumulation of indifference

leaving each

just wanting to ease

no one giving pause

the days passed too swiftly

for some things take time

even to decay

until nothing is left to say

not even good-bye

I like the poem above and think it is one of my better ones. I tried to capture my view of the slow death of my marriage to Kathy. Several people have said they can identify with poem and it's depiction of the collapse of a relationship. I got divorced 10 years ago today. I did it like most everything I do. I was my own lawyer and Kathy's too, I guess. I did all the legal forms for the divorce. At the court date, I was called up to the stand as the plaintiff, though not sure why I was put on the stand. We were doing a very simple divorce, basically stating that we were married, had lived apart for a year, and had settled all property matters. The judge looked through our legal papers and asked me several nonsense questions.

"Do you live on Twin Oaks?"

"Yes"

"How far down Twin Oaks?"

"Down past Shelton Vineyards, about 6/10 of a mile off 268."

"That's a pretty area. Did you grow up there? On a farm?"

"Yes"

"Are you Willie's boy?"

"Yeap"

"You and Mrs. Bryant don't live together?"

"No"

"Your documents look good, take them across the road and register them with the clerk's office."

It went something like that, simple and neat. Except that I tend to grin or laugh in awkward situations, such as on the stand in a courtroom. Kathy was sitting at the defendants table, crying and crying. So you have me grinning and laughing while my soon to be ex-wife is crying. I'm sure I looked a bit like a jerk. As we walked across the road, I asked Kathy why she was crying. She said she didn't know, it just seemed kind of final. I think I said that is kind of what divorce is. Thing is she was the one who really wanted out of the marriage, I didn't. Anyway I found the situation comical, Kathy did as well. We are still friends and talk regularly.

Fireflies, Lightning, and Water Towers

Dancing with Fire Flys

went walking nude tonight

an inadequacy of enough drink

watching fire flys in the night

this provocation to reflect and think

life is complex and confused

it’s good i got a clear head.

you know, i sure wish my ass glowed

I have a group of poems that I call 7 Lines of Foolishness, maybe that's what I should call my blog sometimes. Anyway, guess what, this is one of those poems. I have thought of the poem several times over past month as summer and fireflies have returned. I say the last line to Alison periodically and to myself or God often. Depending on your perspective, it's either a good thing or bad thing that God does not answer this prayer. Some of you must admit it would be pretty cool though. I would be the King of mooning. One other firefly story from a couple of years ago. I was on a night run up and back on Twin Oaks road, when I pass through a drove of fireflies. I had never seen that many fireflies at one time in one place before, nor have I since. There literally had to be tens of thousands fireflies. It was a truly remarkable sight. Just another reason to do things differently from most people, such as running at night.

Which speaking of doing different things. I climbed a water tower again this week. Someone asked if I wanted to join them and I couldn't resist. I had been thinking of climbing one somewhere again as it had been quite a few years since I had done that. The conditions might not have been best, or could have been considered perfect, as there were thunderstorms in the area. As we met for our middle of the night excursion, we quickly decided lightning was a minor and worthwhile risk. We got some popsicles and headed for the tower. No better place to eat popsicles. This was first time I had ever climbed with someone. As he said, you need to choose the right person for such an activity or you're better off alone. Viewing the distant lightning from the high vantage point was quite a show. I plan to still sneak skyward periodically when I'm 80 or 90. There is just something exciting about being so high above everything around and being unrestrained. I don't think it is for everyone. But as my friend and I discussed, we enjoy the sensation of our hearts pounding and gripping things more tightly than normal. Furthermore, maybe I get a different view of my world from this rarely seen viewpoint, literally and metaphorically. It's good to survey our surroundings from an unique perspective sometimes.

Maybe someday my ass will begin to flicker in the night. I'll keep asking.

WARNING: You may not want to read this, Crystal.

For those of you like my friend, Crystal, this may be one of those blogs you will want to skip.  She has said that she can only handle me in small doses.  Thankfully, Alison can handle a large, continuous dose.  Though I may leave some of you wondering how.  This blog actually came about from my recent thinking on how good life is for me right now and thinking more about the Bel Monte race.  I guess I could have written a nice, overly romanticized blog about a seemingly perfect life.  Problem is that is not real, for me anyways.  I doubt I would see life as so wonderful without the un-wonderful portions.  My life has had the surviving sections, just the same way Bel Monte had a tough surviving section.  That is one of the great things about ultras, many times the races will have ups and downs, literally, and emotionally, and physically.  One of the biggest impacts on my life was going through divorce.

Going through divorce changed me and changed me more than any other life event I can think of.  I use the phrase "going through divorce" because just the fact I was once married and got divorced isn't the key factor.  It was all that I had to deal with personally, how I view life, and how I had dealt with life previously.  It would be a book to write all of it so I'll just hit the high points.  One, I wasn't ready to be divorced.  I was a Christian, in some ways strict.  I'd only be married once, only know one woman, love forever.  I still love Kathy, my ex-wife.  Personally, I don't understand how you once really love someone and stop.  I do believe in God's love, the agape love, and in living it.  Most people only seem to apply this to children.  Kathy and I are still friends and talk regularly.  Some people don't understand this.  I don't understand any other way and haven't lost a rational discussion on the subject.  The love has changed.  It's not romantic or sexual.  I love my sisters, I don't need to say more.  But part of my dogma is once I care about someone, I don't stop regardless of the situation.  Some folks have said they couldn't deal with my views toward Kathy.  I guess that is one reason in a list of why I'm not married to them.  I couldn't deal with someone who doesn't get my point of view, cause all they could offer me was a temporary love or concern.  The point is that changing that type of love with Kathy was tough and rocked me to the core.  What did it say about me that I would say I want out?

I also kept myself neatly packed inside in my younger years, before 26.  My internal life was like a post office mail box.  Everything was tidily categorized and ordered.  Some boxes were locked shut.  Things went in and disappeared from my mind.  My divorce dumped everything back out on the floor for me to sort through again.  I spent years sorting back through my past life, some parts I'd seemed to have forgotten.  I'm not sure what I've done with all that crap now.  I've written quite a few poems and some journals.  To be honest, I drank some on nights I felt too overwhelmed.  But one description of me now is that I am not afraid to be naked.  If something about me is good, bad, indifferent, it is what it is.  I'm not ashamed of any of it.  I struggled with being a "perfect" Christian before.  I'll just say that I don't now.  I know that bothers some people, especially when I say exactly what that means.  If I did it, I'll tell you.  I might say it was or is bad, but I did it and in some instances will probably do it again.  To use Christian terms, I sin, I know that I will repeat some sins.  I'll try to sin less, but I sin as a willful act, a choice.  I don't believe in the "it's not my fault, I couldn't resist."  I'd rather own my actions.  I might not be a perfect person, don't even want to be, but I'll be honest with you.

Somewhere in that rambling is how divorce upset my previously perfect, and falsely, balanced life.  Divorce was a hard process for me that brought out some good things in me, some bad.  It definitely changed me for better, and worse.  I do like that I am more like I was as a kid.  I wish I could recover the naivety I had as kid(that will be a good blog sometime), but I won't.  One of my best lessons was that life, time, the movement of the sun and moon stops for no one.  We each have a limited amount of time and I plan on living mine up.  I don't want a gravestone when I die(don't believe in that, for me), but if I did I would want it to say, "He did too much," or "He did too much living."  The second sounds a little arrogant, but I can live with that.  I also have much greater appreciation of life after divorce.  I am much more thankful for anything, even some of the "bad" and "difficult."

Below is a poem that I wrote this weekend.  It's a first draft, which I seldom like.  I like some of what this poem says, but not exactly how it says it.  It was brewing in my head for years and finally fell out.  Anyway, I thought I'd toss it out there.  So the point of all my rambling is that some parts of life must just be survived.  During my process of divorce, I made some different choices from before.  I didn't try to be perfect.  I shouted at God, cussed God, questioned my belief in God, but I talked to him and I talked honest.  I was merely surviving for a year or more, and not doing that well.  Just as I had to survive a large section of Bel Monte 50 Mile.  You force yourself to put one foot in front of the other, whether it is fast or slow, running or walking.  When you can, you make yourself run and good things can happen.  If you walk when you could be running, you'll miss an opportunity.  Other people can judge whether I'm good or bad, better or worse.  You can judge.  I'm not sure how much sense this blog makes, but who cares.  It's me.  I'm definitely different and not afraid to be judged or disliked or liked.  But I plan on using my time up and I'm not afraid to be naked.

Drunk and Naked on the Floor

Looking back,

it was just a night 

alone in the sea. 

At the time, 

it was night after night, 

drunk and naked, 

alone on the floor. 

Where was my God? 

Though I've asked, 

he hasn't spoken. 

Too many nights, 

I couldn't sleep 

and the Comforter 

never came, 

maybe my hard words 

kept him away. 

No one wants to see 

a bare soul on the floor, 

naked and drunk. 

Someone came and walked away, 

a man stripped a little too much. 

They'd worry in silence. 

I'd suffer alone. 

Sometimes you have to 

swim on your own 

or drink 

yourself naked and drunk 

on the cold soil.

It seemed like years, 

it seemed like a night or two, 

maybe there's little difference. 

A bad mind lost time, 

a day, a year, 

I remember little of either. 

So looking back, 

maybe just one night,

maybe four years, 

a minor detail 

of a corrupted mind. 

Not sure who rescued me, 

or if I swam the ocean alone 

and found the shore. 

God hadn't walked away 

having seen me stripped bare 

ranting in my nakedness.

Shrivel feet on course soil, 

clothed once more 

suddenly appropriate again, 

but not underneath. 

Though, the Comforter 

could cover 

a multitude of nakedness. 

She'd say I still wasn't right, 

though she found me 

far from removed 

from the shore 

only sometimes 

naked and bare.

Just a single night 

alone in the sea 

left me different and bare. 

Maybe God needed 

a man, 

naked and bare.

So Much to Say

So Much to Say

I thought through 

everything

I had to say,

until

I could say

nothing at all.

I had a some random things I thought about blogging the last couple of days and started to write.  Then I started thinking.  It made me think of this old poem of mine.  So I'll just post it, this describes me quite well sometimes.  

Starting to Speak

                Narrow Opening

starting to speak

inhibitions renew

and grips confusion’s fear

he burst and spew

full inside

but no opening just a crack

to seep out the light

or more the tears

a trickle down the long hallway

only this small fracture

only little release

This is something that I wrote on the first page of a journal in August 2000.  I find it fitting for my first post on my blog.  I am not sure how to do my blog, so it will basically be like me, random.  I would not consider it necessarily a running blog, but there will be a lot of blogs about running.  Running is a big part of my life, but it is not my life.  There is sure to be some personal philosophy and religion.  Those are big parts of me as well.  I plan on my blogging to be just as my title says, Life through the eye of a runner, albeit a rather warped runner.  So beware, as many of my friends know, you never know what will come out of me.  Or when.  Follow my blog at your own risk.  I am not responsible for any brain damage caused from reading this blog.