Life is Like Running

Diary Entry, August 24, 2004

Life is so much nicer when each day is lived with grace and generosity and joy. But doing that, actually DOING that? It's fucking hard.Life is kind of like running. There's a downhill part. When you're running downhill, breath comes easier, muscles relax, and you get hopeful that maybe you can run an extra two miles today. Inspiration hits.Of course, then you have to go uphill. Breathing is harder, gravity works against you, and you're focused on just making it to the top. The key, the challenge, the opportunity, is to hold onto that inspiration you plucked out of the air on your downhill run; and on your jogs uphill - no matter how long the hill - to realize that the landscape will shift again.

Seven Years Ago

November 19, 2002

I think about going to a bar alone. Dancing close to someone and for a while feeling as if I belong somewhere. Sex without love - I don't like it. Because my heart is too mushy for it. I get hooked. Relationships end. Maybe sex is the safest form of connection. It has to end, and when it ends, you orgasm. When relationships end, you want to kill yourself.

Story fer ya

There once was a beautiful young woman who had five sons. She was afraid to clean her house, because she knew if she scrubbed the floors and the windows and the walls and vacuumed, the house would immediately get dirty again, and her work would be for nothing. For eighteen years, she did not clean the house, and it became so dirty that social services came and took away her boys, which is what she wanted all along, but she was sad it took eighteen years to happen. When they were gone, she scrubbed and dusted and polished like it was an orgasm.

The end. This was fiction, by the way.

Music Mondays

For Annie, who's ready for a break from her small town.


Every last one, route one, rural heart's
Got a story to tell
Every grandma, in-law, ex-girlfriend
Maybe knows it just a little too well
Whether you're late for church
Or you're stuck in jail
Hey, word's gonna get around
Everybody dies famous in a small town

Let's go on down to the quick stop
Wear your yellow shades and
I'll put on my tight jeans
And we'll just spend the weekend burnin' rubber
And we'll let 'em point and stare in disbelief'

Famous in a Small Town, Miranda Lambert

My friends from high school
Married their high school boyfriends
Moved into houses in the same ZIP codes
Where their parents live
But I, I could never follow
No I, I could never follow

I hit the highway in a pink RV with stars on the ceiling
Lived like a gypsy
Six strong hands on the steering wheel
I've been a long time gone now
Maybe someday, someday I'm gonna settle down
But I've always found my way somehow
By taking the long way
Taking the long way around
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around
I met the queen of whatever
Drank with the Irish and smoked with the hippies
Moved with the shakers
Wouldn't kiss all the asses that they told me to

No I, I could never follow
No I, I could never follow

It's been two long years now
Since the top of the world came crashing down
And I'm getting' it back on the road now
But I'm taking the long way
Taking the long way around
I'm taking the long way
Taking the long way around
The long
The long way around

Well, I fought with a stranger and I met myself
I opened my mouth and I heard myself
It can get pretty lonely when you show yourself
Guess I could have made it easier on myself
But I, I could never follow
No I, I could never follow
Well, I never seem to do it like anybody else
Maybe someday, someday I'm gonna settle down
If you ever want to find me I can still be found
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around

The Long Way Around, The Dixie Chicks

Workin' 9 to 5,
What a way to make a living.

9 to 5, Dolly Parton

Friday Fiction

Twelve rows of corn. That's all I have in the field behind my house. I lost my wedding ring in the corn. I was on my back looking through neon green corn leaves to the blue sky. The sky had me wondering...it was completely empty and I stared for several minutes and got dizzy. My head was somewhere else and I must have played with my ring too much. It's gone and now I'm sifting through the dirt looking for the diamond glint.

There's a callus on my palm directly underneath my ring finger. I rub the callus over and over with my thumb and get on my knees and get dirt in my fingernails.

He'll be home soon.

My favorite quote ever. So far this week.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions." ~ Rilke

My favorite quotes ever so far this week

She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. - Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Why did it seem so tricky, so difficult, to lead simultaneously a romantic
life and a fully conscious one? - Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home
from Hot Climates