Still Catching Glass!!

THE GLASS CATCHER!!  I have been a Glass Catcher for well over a year now!  Here is a great idea that came to me at that time!  What a great hobby for any distance runner!  What exactly is Catching Glass??  Well let me share a couple ground rules & tips which help me…

1.       Catching Glass is finding little unique pieces of glass, very much like “Beach Glass”, but on the roads!
2.       As you can see in the image above, they all fill their own place in the beauty and fun of it.
3.       I do have criteria about the pieces I find!!!
4.       I always look for glass not much larger than a quarter, but preferably thick, worn and old.  Since we distance runners place ourselves out into the air to be tried and "pressed"... finding pieces like this speak of the facets of us running!   
5.       It has been very rare to ever come back without catching anything, but if I do strike out, I do not waste any time over it!  Days when I find quite a few pieces make up for it! 
6.       AGAIN… NO NEW GLASS!!!  (The history behind a piece of glass is part of the beauty of the collection!  Just think of all the stories behind each piece!)
7.       I average about 2-5 pieces a run.  NEVER touch plastic! 
8.       As for colors… around this area (Rural NC!) green and clear are common… older glass is tinted (very nice!)… and red, orange and blue glass are VERY RARE! {I still have not found ONE piece of orange!}
 
Catching Glass is something great to look forward to in addition to regular runs... good for meditation and hope.  Now I think of better and “best” containers to display it all!  Besides, all the colorful, unique glass speaks of so many great runs!!  Now when you look at all your little pieces building daily... there is a tangible display of the history of your own running life!  Cheers!

Unchangeable Joy!

It has been a while since the last post, yet certainly this has not been because I lacked any ideas to write about!  I have never had a better heart to distance running… never broader or deeper or more serving to the many needs which regularly drift through my consciousness as a human being.  If you run distance… rather if you have some love of being Nomadic within and without… then it is my only hope that distance running is fitting into a winning place within your soul.  There is an unchangeable joy in the ardent quality of it! 

I find myself regularly pressing the issue with staying true to running holistically.  Today I found the revelation of the "opportunity to run” (that is running when the opportunity best suites) having a far better place within, than running after a specific effort… or demanding certain "mileage" or "pace rate".  Remarkably recovery happens regularly!  This staying true to pre & post run diet needs, hydration, rest/sleep, eating fairly right and training intensity need.  Of course all these ‘distance running issues’ happen so much better with an open heart and mind!  

Here is another perspective, for running wild merits us better perspectives daily!  I realized that I spent 4,701 seconds running yesterday morning.  To me a simple average time to run… an effort to suite the human soul.  I also wondered what the possible condition could be of the human soul which does no work or has no labor.  I could not imagine the condition of the heart and mind which resists the very design of their humanity.  What really happens to the soul which resists themselves in inactivity? 

Certainly we all know the physical ramifications of inactivity, but what liberation of mind… what lifting of the spirit is also missed!  So, can you tell me just how many second this day you ran wild and gave your soul to the efforts of your humanity??  As many of us know, there comes so much good of it!    

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”  ~ H.D. Thoreau      

A "Substance" Called LOVE

One would think that loving someone would be the grandest and most beautiful thing in the world. It is, BUT, loving someone is also the hardest, most self-effacing and ardent things given us.  Especially if you REALLY love a person.  Loving a human cannot be rightly assumed a shallow, simple thing or without substance.  Human beings, in their very nature, release an eternal substance with their "person" and be it either love or hate... this "substance" shared does last forever.  Certainly the emotional pull and squeeze of such a 'substance of LOVE' is strongest when we are closest to it, or even closest removed from it, but like all things in shared relationships... TIME does very strange things to us.  

Loving someone also seems to come as a very divided thing.  That is, the quantities are balanced... divided and delineated.  There would be no one truthful who could say that they love "everyone" the same.  For of nature there is a specific quality of love shared with very exact measure to all we cross paths with.  LOVE is diverse and without limits in its nature and appropriation.  LOVE is a pure substance; whether we love much or we love little. 
Sometimes the MUCH is so right, and sometimes the MUCH is far too much!  While sometimes the LITTLE is so right and sometimes the LITTLE is far too little!  We must survey the substance we share and give it in all respects passionately.

As for the few we overflowingly LOVE... how rare, how capturing, how needful!!  Here the "substance" within our soul bubbles up and over our ability to rationalize it... and often our ability to contain the emotion of it below some safe and dignified surface.  But this... the wealth and the height of all our loves, is the LOVE which most matters, which most changes, which most inspires!
 
Like the magnificent mountain above, high and dignified, overflowing LOVE makes its own place in our emotion.  How do we determine who merits this?  How do we guide and direct such a strength?  LOVE; like LIFE; is not some tidy thing which a box doth keep... but a coursing force replenishing.  LOVE; like the sea... swelling, coursing, cresting... LOVE deep, full, crashing.  You see, if LOVE be not this, then it is not LOVE. 

Something Supernatural!

Yes, “something”, because it is expectantly infeasible to define what is actually “supernatural”!  But something supernatural did indeed happen on my run today.  It was one of those days where you are REALLY on the edge between taking a day off after running for six days straight.  BUT, the “days” were easy days, and they were soft.  They were ALL runs of 6-8 miles and with absolute respect to recovery from a pulled arch last month.  They were awkward, yes... tight to rehabilitating, yes.   But it is time to get flowing again!  {I will add that although this may seem like a lot of running for some, I am well used to 60-70 miles a week.}

TODAY the heart within me lead me into the wilderness once again after waking and floating through a morning of speculation over all sorts of tight, awkward feelings through my feet.  (Have you been there??)  My objective was to softly flow and cover the earth, while pressing no issue.  To be brave and to feel it out... to face the possibilities for desire and for the passion of the motion in covering miles in the rustling breeze and sunshine!  My premise holistically was to go and BELIEVE.

What is supernatural (as I believe many of you have touched upon yourselves!), is that I feel 100 times better now… after the run… throughout all parts, then I did before the run!!  I cannot explain this, and I am NOT speaking about any “runners high” or “endorphins”!  (THAT is overrated.)  I went through the distance and faced the doubt.  I stood the line, and was delivered again to better motion, better balance and seemingly all things better!  There is healing in the right motion... if we can find the "right" motion!!  Something supernatural is involved in that!  Have you been there??  What is YOUR story?  The best quote for this…

“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”  ~ Thucydides    

How Can We KEEP Clarity?!!? Wow!!

Immediately speaking the context to the title is this: in any given subject, it now takes a matter of minutes (sometimes seconds!) to be immediately overwhelmed by the vast quantity of information, personalities, input and feedback possible!!  If a person is not weary, soon they will inevitably be washed into the sea of digital vastness and the burden of too many people, too many things or too many Blogs they sincerely desire to follow.  But as we all know -- too quickly TOO MANY!!  HHhmmm...   

The question I have been facing is: "How can we keep clarity?"  How can we exist and daily make things in our lives and things we share MORE and not less?  Can we move in the direction, through intention and priority, to better quality and clarity... not simply trying for more quantity and inevitably less clarity?  I have actually started to write more for THIS reason!  To find the best way to balance and possibly share with others who have also wondered!

Certainly, there might be some kind of thrill in seeing "friends" build up, in increased "followers", and even in finding yet another Blog to TRY to follow!!  CERTIANLY -- but have we balanced this reality aside the simplicity & virtue of distance running and its essence?

It stands to reason that the essence of most all our distance running is the solitary effort.  Although solitude it good for any soul, it is not the best place for any soul to stay.  As we all know, it is motion which sets us free!  The holistic distance runner is someone who is after the balance of their social and even anthropological life expression.  Which is just a fancy way to say, they are interested in more than a digital record of an idea as to who they think they know.  

If anything, the heart of a holistic distance runner desires to know what they experience and where it goes in the circle of their lives.  Even when things compound, get jumbled and the "lists" build so fast!  The HDR yearns for the essence of others expression in their lives - especially other distance runners, yet usually does not have many at all close to them physically.  They run and cover distance and become more human with every effort... and with this alone... gain more clarity in their life! 

I challenge all to follow their heart.  To clarify and prioritize.  Yes -- prioritize people, prioritize time, prioritize efforts and expressions!  There is a better clarity for all!  Run Well, Live Well!

The Path of Moments

I go spinning down the funnel of my emotion seemingly too often.
However, this is not of surprise... for my humanity demands it.
When I do slide and rotate to the common bottom... somewhere... sometime...
Something/Someone gathers me together again.
I am there brought again back to the top.  Wherever this might be.
Sometimes instantly.
Life is A PATH OF MOMENTS like this... repeating itself in my emotion.

Holistic Distance Runner's!  After an exceptionally strange, but beautiful, recovery run today, I am confirmed again of the nobility and grace of our efforts.  I should think we all consider ourselves an experiment of one each time we head out -- for long distance running merits one of the most ardent efforts a person can undertake! 

Have you been here... Although I began the day with no expectations to run; refrained because of strange issues and sensitivities with regards to recovery; the path of moments opened the door for a heart felt run when the mid-day came.  I locked myself into the moment of a recovery run... observing every foot plant... and now on the other side of that universe -- it seems I have become another human being!  Better, more balanced... cured in motion.      

I am reminded of a quote by Mark Twain... "Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours."

I suppose sometimes I might wish that my emotion would ask my permission to entrance or exit!  Yet I know foolishness when it raises it head.  So indeed we runners run... holistically speaking, we cope. It is the fiber of the distance, the fusion of time and the energy of the effort which delivers us again to sanity.

Running distance might very well subconsciously teach me that it is not feasible to think that "mood' can be maintain as I desire it to be.  So I do see that time out in wildness does cool my soul... it does clarify my mind... and with force.  Force is what unruly emotion needs to come to temper, for there is a vast collective quality of life which makes it bearable. 

Though running long distances cannot provide unaltered mood; considering logically both the good and the evil IN emotion; running distance DOES provide something different from which I bear right now!  Running distance promises this without fail.  And this "difference" is what my path, this moment, calls for!  Run out ofter yourself!    

In Our Wildness

Why must the human heart be squeezed in order for the noblest expressions to come forth?  Why must what we need of love and affection sometimes seem to take so much work, or so much sacrifice... and have the potential for so much pain?  I cannot hope to know.  So I go out into the wilderness and place myself over miles and miles. 

If I can be removed from the tatters of modernity, then even better.  In our wildness there is sanity.  For in wildness; our own wild design; is where we find any degree of preservation, of hope, of inspiration and any degree of love for others.  

It is in the depths of wildness that one meets kindness and has it out with Him.  It is against wind and rain, against tempest and storm, against heat and dire need, in WILDERNESS, that we face our selfishness.  We run and float through the spectrum of our personhood...

Spiritually ~ how pure desire shines... how great hope lives!  Individually ~ how little we really need to live well!   Instinctively ~ how simple our wildness!  Collectively ~ how vast the need we meet in others!   Socially ~ what crazy demands we find jumping into our path!  Politically ~ how failed our understanding of human interaction!   Only sun, wind, rain, air and earth can mend!      
So, wilderness teaches me that I am squeezed because I am supposed to be contrite.  I am suppose to be humble.  Love and affection take so much effort because they ARE noble.  Love and affection generate the depth of energy within us BECAUSE they are the fiber of living! 

So, run into the wilderness I must.  I can find no sense anywhere else.  It calls to me as the Sirens.

The Fine Line

Preface:   A THANKS to the hearts who have inspired me to this day and to this moment!  I have never approached a ‘Blog” out of superficiality, or duty and obligation, yet from the depth of the passion I have for the nomadic life.  As we shall see, there might be many more that yearn and hunger for the holistic aspects of distance running and the expression of their humanity.  Pass on a special place and hopefully this forum can provide a good foundation for the many regular, daily revolutions we should all expect!  

THE FINE LINE

Have you been injured?  Well… are you a distance runner??!  Whether you are injured now, or have just come through a recovery, you might have already begun to discern the existent “fine line” between rehabilitation and re-injury.  I like to call it “the dangerous place”.  However, that place in ‘getting better’ is sometimes a place we must be!

The premise here is this: Who is a serious efforted distance runner who has NOT been injured?  So!  Let’s take a minute to look closer at this “fine line” in our process of overcoming what we have faced or do face.  It is often the holistic runner’s greatest desire to simply be out covering miles normally and naturally.

Our rehabilitation is a process to our running naturally again.  It is because we covet this freedom so much that sometime we cross the “fine line” to re-injuring ourselves.  We have a need then…  we need to be able to softly dance through each facet of our rehabilitation respectively… the need to be gentle and patient… dancing on “the fine line”, while holding steady without demands. 

In the need for rehabilitation and recovery, there is usually a specific tension.  Sometimes mystic and sometimes painful! Returning to normal condition, and a natural running expression without pain, often demands a steady mind to hold us true.  True through tension and discomfort… keeping ourselves strictly on “the fine line” until we pass over to complete recovery!  Remember, it will come!!  It WILL come!