author, author!

Hamish MacDonald launched his new novel (Idea in Stone) in Canada on Wednesday night. He'd already launched it in Scotland where he moved to live sometime ago. Perhaps the best all round reading experience I've attended. The author's and my pal Mark did a fine job as MC insulting all with deep sincerity, Hame's reading was fabuous and I'm looking forward to jumping into the book, and the three women who sang a couple of short sets of what I call Cracker Country (lots of Southern States' counties are mentioned, for example) were superb, quite literally suberb.

And Hame not only wrote and published this work, he also made the book -- you know hand binding and artwork and all the rest.

Hey, you can order your very own handmade copy of the book (or read it free -- ya cheap bastard!) by going to hamishmacdonald.com and clicking on the appropriate button down the left side of the page.

Way to go Hame!

(And holy cow, thanks to the singers -- by gawd I ain't heard "Rockytop" in at least a decade and rarely have I heard it done so well -- yeeeeehaw! Again made me realize, given their music was so good, just how much new country really does suck, but that's the topic of another blog)

Pride in Profile

Joy in Mudville as Injuries Told to Fuck Themselves

The mind is a distance runner's key hurdle, by far; much more so than lactic acid, de- or hyper-hydration, strains, pulls, soft-tissue dislocations, blisters... Amazing how on even a short run, or before an evening's jog starts, one's mind is often suggesting a few cheesies and a DVD of a long cancelled TV show would be a better option. The easy route is the mind's pre-set default.

Of course the mind is also the athlete's ultimate resource but, as just suggested, it ain't the natural course of thinking 'cause physiological accomplishment means stress and stress hurts, or is at least less comfortable than less stress. Stop, says the brain stem; get your ass in gear, says grey stuff much higher up in the noggin. Which brain wins is championship stuff.

Story in the Globe this week about a Canadian who competed in some across America bike race. 5,000 miles in 10 days and some hours plus. A race where people's bodies shut down, but as a physician was saying, along with a psychologist in the article, most fail in the race long before renal failure threatens. The Canadian finisher (I think he was third?) commented that he would not have been able to finish the race if he hadn't lost both parents at an early age -- only that sort of loss prepared him for the mental games of the ride. He said one begins to hate one's support team (especially at night -- riders are timed from the go -- on or off the bike) wondering where they are in the dark, wondering why they get to sleep, not him.

Like Smith and Wesson beats four aces, ultimately physical failure wins over even the most stalwart steel-brained psychological master of mind over matter motivation and performance, but where is that line. The bike guy, his doctor said would be up and fine the next day, it will be his mind, said his psychologist, that will give him performance "nightmares" waking and sleeping for some time. Sleep proves difficult because he'll wake up worried he's alseep not racing...

No where have I whined more consistently than in this blog about my status as a has-been runner. Injuries being the reason I run no more -- first my immuno-inflammatory (I love saying that) condition in my back and hips stopped marathon training in the summer of '99. I worked through that with drastic reductions in training and then while running down hill on a trail I stepped in a hole and did everything but break my ankle (chipped bone, nearly severed ligaments, torn cartilage -- sadly diagnosed first as a simple sprain) but had started to run post both of those when the knee thing and subsequent surgery stopped me for good in the winter/spring of 2003.

I ran/walked the Pride and Remembrance Walk a month or so after my surgery and that really was the last time I did any running except some treadmill stuff before things got worse to the point that walking to work many mornings was a painful affair indeed.

Here now in a classic case of burying the lead (especially given I chose headline format for the blog title) I tell you that I RAN most the entire distance of this morning's Pride and Remembrance Run.

No training, no internal expectation or remote intent to run it, and following a five week bout of sloth (no gym or cardio work for some reason), I walked the first few hundred metres of the run. I then hugged the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada--who asked why I as a walker was passing him as a runner. That comment transformed in my eyes the upcoming intersection into a finish line and that reptilian brain segment screamed "Don't, your knee!" to which that higher grey stuff asked "what can a hundred metres hurt?" and so I jogged it and then the next and the next few tens of metres. I walked into the water station, did my traditional (they fall for it EVERY year) toss water onto a couple of my ex running pals rather than drink the H2O, and then I ran some more. Each time the ol' lower brain fretted and worried I told it to go fuck itself and I just kept running. And passing people. I even chose my line through curves to ensure distance efficiency...

Just recounting it makes me want to weep, I so love running. Such an irrational love. The knee was totally absent--not so much as a peep. The back and hips... well as my rheumetologist told me once -- " sometimes the body just inflames joints for no good reason that we know of, so feel free to exercise the hell out of it until the pain stops you..." No pain, but lots of reminders from the iguana in my brain, but with more and louder retorts of "are you nuts this is incredible, so fuck. right. off. from me in response." And I ran, wearing dress shorts (and underwear!) and a cotton hat and t-shirt, although I didn't notice until the end.

But I ran. And I'm pretty sure I just might do it again soon, like say, Monday...

steve

PS -- finishing time was 27.05 (And that despite the fact that given I walked much of the first mile I hit that mark at a sad and whopping 10:21!!!!)

Happy Pride!

And the sign said...

Notice, hand written, on big whiteboard outside the college bookstore:

Clear Speech
Now Available

Come to think about it, when I was in the bookstore last week the guy who sold me my pencil leads did mumble...

Class Clown

Something happened on the weekend that had me thinking about the ability to make people laugh. From that starting point I found myself remembering that the form my teenage angst took was to hate the fact I was class clown. While I remember the sheer power to transcend all clique boundaries being seen as a funny guy granted, in private I used to pound my chest and promise myself I would not succumb to the pressure to be funny. I know... but really I did. The demand began standing, waiting for the school bus, intensified on the bus -- where being seen as funny won me seats near the very back and some protection from bullies even very early in my high school career -- and then continued throughout the day, including some expectation from some teachers to entertain their class. And laugh they all did, regardless frankly of what I said or did (and physical comedy was a big thing in high school, of course). I remember once going on stage at an assembly to make some actual announcement, then just standing there silent for a few seconds and leaving. People pissed their pants, for god's sake.

As I've changed jobs I've also been reminded about what really has been bit invisible for some time to me (hard to describe what I mean there) and that's that I make people laugh. Many folks of where I used to work have told me the place is not nearly as fun since my "funny" isn't there anymore, and the folks at the new job take the opportunity to introduce me to every new person I meet as the college's new funny guy.

My mother has been having some health problems in the past few weeks, post her stroke of a year or more ago. She's in hospital again with suspected heart problems (likely a heart attack) and I visited her on the weekend. She's been test living (yah, you can do that! Amazing huh?) a few seniors apartment complexes (with varying degrees of extended health support attached) and collapsed while arriving at one a week ago.

This is going to be "had to be there stuff" but on Sunday while asking her which home she liked best my mother said it was a bit difficult to measure the latest since she was (with great embarrassment) carted out of the place on a gurney only a few minutes after arriving. From there my mother and I built a comedy routine out of our conversation -- I assumed an old woman on the floor persona telling the home administrator that I found the floor very clean and liked the selection of tile. My mother chimed in asking if there would be many stairs to "climb" and on and on we went with silly mirth.

When we could breath again (yah, I know, nothing like getting one's hospitalized mother into a state of laughing fits!) my mother said -- "Aye-awch, yer so silly. That was such a good laugh. My spirits are lifted. Oh, that's what I needed..."

And THAT almost made me cry.

Gettin' Old

An old truck at The Distillery District.

A Totally Different World Gets More Distant Still

http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/06/14/mr-dressup.html

Art Lover

Ken Thomson was apparently a legendary tightwad -- although Bill Thorsell on CBC Radio One this morning suggested it was about value, not cheapness. Sure, reporters at Thomson papers had to (so they told me) turn in pencil stubs before they were given a new one, and the guy once (according to a memorial quotation in today's Globe) held up a Loblaws checkout line by dropping a Loonie and not leaving until he (with the assistance of a legion of staff from the store) found the coin 10 minutes later, but can you call a guy cheap who buys art at record price levels? I don't think so. I don't know any cheapskate who would find value in something as "useless" as art. I figure anybody who had a big bag of cash just never forgot that it was ultimately made up of a whole lot of single Loonies...

Of everthing I've heard about the guy as he is memorialized, the most wonderful thing is Thomson's own description of himself literally fondling his first sculpture acquisition with the sheer delight the art (not the purchase) brought him.

As to the reason for this blog, I guess it's that I think I understand Thomson's touching of that sculpture. I just have to look up from my desk or turn around, or take a moment as I do almost every morning there is enough light, to look upon the works in my bedroom, in awe (and with a catch in my throat) at the (too few!!) works of art I've surrounded myself with. Someone else remembered Thomson for the "tours" he took people on of his art in a gallery next to his downtown office and it taking an hour or two as he stopped at each piece and remarked, not on some art historical fact or point of critique but on those things that made him love the work...

The envy I had for the guy stems from his financial position that allowed him to possess just about any art work he wanted, but that it wasn't about ego, it was about love of art. Afterall, in the beginning, he bought art nobody else gave much credit, but that he loved. And thank god for that -- given he gave such a huge chunk of his collection to the AGO, so we can all go and share as we view the works the same catch in the throat that Thomson surely felt when they hung above his couch...

On Not Blogging For a While

Deucalion, Pyrrha had all the luck
threw a few rocks and the world gets reborn.

Me, I’d hail a flood, a few ideas
bones not of mother earth, but invention.

Grand metamorphose, bring it on by Jove!
transformation: witless hack come writer.