Songs of Experience

I’m reading another great book by Anne Lamott: Plan B … Further Thoughts on Faith.
In the chapter called “Heat,” she writes of “a few mothers who seem happy with their children all the time, as if they’re sailing through motherhood, entranced. But up close and personal, you find that these moms tend to have little unresolved issues; they exercise three hours a day or they check their husbands’ pockets looking for motel receipts.” Its one thing to exercise three hours a day if you are a professional runner – someone who makes her living from running (actually pays for rent and food and health insurance by racing). Its another thing entirely to obsessively run up and down the street in front of your house for three hours a day while God – and the neighbors – bear witness to the demons you are battling. Now, if you are a mother and you are doing this … I say, GET HELP. You do not want to teach your children that being a rat in a cage, running around and around and around on a wheel, is any kind of solution to your problems. The same is true for obsessive dieters. It is meaningless (and, I think, selfish) to spend your life’s energy counting calories and constantly thinking about what food is going in (or not in) your mouth.

Life is meant to be lived, not measured.

In response to the queries on the “world famous message board” at Letsrun.com, I must defend the honor of every female 10,000m runner in the Olympic trials in 1988, 1992, and 1996. When I wote, “no druggies in the the 10k,” I was not implying anything about anyone. I was simply relieved that I was racing in a clean event. Sui Vilva got it right when she posted:

“Maybe she’s not “referring” to anyone, obliquely or otherwise. Maybe she’s saying that there were not druggies in the 10,000 period.”

p.s. I think Kramer has a crush on me. You know how 3rd grade boys punch girls to show they like them? (I think all of your anonymous on-line bashings are actually love notes. How sweet).

On a trail run yesterday, my old friend (and former Team Wednesday training partner) asked me if I felt satisfied with what I’d accomplished as a runner. Perhaps he was wondering why I was headed up to the 5k Masters Nationals at Freihofer’s next month; did I have anything left to prove as a runner? Heck no, I said. I reached every goal I ever wanted as a runner – and then some. But there was no gold medal or world record – no where CLOSE to either of those – so how can I say I reached every goal? Well, my mother always told me to try my best. I used to agonize over the difference between wanting to be THE best and trying to do MY best. What if my best never is the best, I often worried. It never was … but, still, I am satisfied. Here’s why: After four Olympic trials over 16 years, I finally lined up on the perfect day (MY perfect day) where I had trained properly for months and months, never missing a day, where my race-fear demons were behind me, where the southern temperature and fan-base was with me, where my physical, mental, and spiritual selves were one, where the three spots open for making an Olympic team were truly OPEN (no druggies in the 10k that year), where the gods of distance running blessed my every 25 laps … on that day, I tried my very best … on that day, I was third. And third was enough. I was satisfied. Making the Olympic team put the letter “O” after my name (in much the same way a doctoral student finally earns her PhD letters). Every race since that day in Atlanta back in 1996 has been like winning a bonus game in pinball.

“(s)He’s a pinball wizard, has to be a trick …

(s)He ain’t got no distractions
Can’t hear those buzzers and bells,
Don’t see lights a flashin’
Plays by sense of smell.
Always has a replay,
‘n’ never tilts at all…
That deaf dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pin ball.”

- lyrics from, The Who

At the end of every season (whether as a coach or athlete), I feel a tremendous weight of melancholy. It may be physical (the extreme peak then sudden drop of adrenalin and testosterone … NO, not the illegal kind; women do produce testosterone naturally). It may be emotional (the feeling of loss and, certainly, grief over the death of a goal; even if your dream is realized, it is over). It may be social (and by the way, what does “psycho-social” mean?) due to the team dispersing and loneliness setting in. It may be even be the practical loss of routine that brings on the blues. Whatever the case, here it is the most gorgeous week in May in the Carolinas and I am not out on my deck admiring the azaleas; I am in this dark corner tinkering with melancholy.

When I tried to put this into words for my Janes, I used an excerpt from a poem by John Koethe:

“Let me try once more. I think the saddest moments
Are the ones that also seem most beautiful,
For the nature of a moment is to fade,
Leaving everything unaltered, and the landscape
Where the light fell as it was before.
And time makes poetry from what it takes away,
And the measure of experience
Is not that it be real, but that it last,
And what one knows is simply what one knew,
And what I want is simply what I had.
These are the premises that structure what I feel,
The axioms that govern my imagination,
And beneath them lies the fear
Not the fear of the unknown, but the fear of growing old
Unchanged, of looking in the mirror
At a future that repeats itself ad infinitum.
It could be otherwise so easily.
The transience that lectures so insistently of loss
Could speak as clearly of an openness renewed,
A life made sweeter by its changing; “

-by John Koethe (North Point North)