Songs of Experience

*
Remember Closer to Fine, the 80’s classic by the Indigo Girls?
Life gets a whole lot easier once you realize you’ll never make it to perfection. The best you’ll ever do is get closer to fine, which is pretty damn good if you ask me. It’s like that curve in math that is rapidly approacing zero (but never actually gets there because it’s mathematically impossible).

Closer to Fine
by, The Indigo Girls

I’m trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
And the best thing you’ve ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
It’s only life after all
Yeah

Well darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable
And lightness has a call that’s hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it
I’m crawling on your shores

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
(the less I seek my source)
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

And I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a b-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind
Got my paper and I was free

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
(the less I seek my source)
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
And I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I’d been the night before
And I went in seeking clarity.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
Yeah we go to the doctor, we go to the mountains
We look to the children, we drink from the fountains
Yeah we go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
(the less I seek my source)
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

Like most bloggers, I have favorite sites I visit every day [Fat Charlie's Diary, pencil shavings, flashes of panic, my friend Sage's yoga blog] which creates a feeling of community (in my mind only, perhaps … uh, that’s a little scary if you think about it – not unlike hearing “voices”). Normally, I don’t have the time to cruise around and window shop – blogshop? – for ideas. My techie husband keeps me up-to-date on the latest internet fads (i.e. Snakes on a blog) and I do make the necessary professional rounds of visiting letsrun, dyestat, fastwomen, and (occasionally) Runner’s World to check out the running buzz. I never haunt the women/mom/Martha Stewart wanna-be web pages, because most of the bloggers in this category are liars. Nobody’s children (or lives) are that perfect, no matter how many made-from-scratch cakes you bake or how many sweaters you knit. I wish people would just tell the truth, instead of presenting their on-line case for cleverness or beauty or perfection.

So, when I stumbled upon this website after Googling “postcard art,” I thought … hooray! someone is after the truth.

What kind of secret-revealing post-card might you send?

Oh, yeah, and here’s the ultimate reason why I never did/never could use performance-enhancing drugs:

I recall being in drug testing one time after a major race (where I’d finished, yet again, in the “no cigar” place – 4th) and a competitor in front of me was complaining that she’d been accused of taking drugs because she’d had such a huge, sudden drop in her times … and, possibly, because she looked rather manly after having been a beauty in college. You know the signs: larger forehead, facial hair, lowered voice (often you’ll see steroid-users wearing braces as adults to keep their human growth hormone (HGH) jaws from expanding – and, I assume, separating all their teeth (?). Anyway, she was fuming and cussing, “How dare they say that?!” etc. and, in retrospect, methinks she was protesting too much. At the time, I commiserated with her, saying, “Yeah, its crazy to think of taking drugs and risking infertility. I can’t wait to be a mom; who knows what that stuff will do to your reproductive organs.” To which she responded quickly, TOO quickly, “Oh, I don’t want kids.” As if she’d already calculated and dismissed those risks.

Another competitor once said to me, in her prime, “I don’t need kids. I have my dogs and my running. I don’t need anything else.” But later, when I saw her in her 40’s at a talk we were both giving for a shoe store opening – after I had my first child (and was, no doubt, beaming with love!), this same woman said, “I wish I had children.” But it was too late. Ouch. You see, an athletic career is so short – soooooo short – but when you’re in it, when you’re caught up in the utter ambition of this singular achievement, you lose all perspective. I’m sure it happens in other professions, but the consequences are not as permanent. So many female distance runners can’t and don’t have children because of a choice they made in their foolish 20’s. For them, it’s no cigar for life.

side effects:

In females, the excessive concentrations cause male characteristics to develop and interfere with normal female functions. The drugs can:

* Stimulate hair growth on the face and body
* Suppress or interfere with menstrual cycle, possibly leading to infertility
* Thicken the vocal cords, which causes the voice to deepen, possibly permanently
* If pregnant, interfere with the developing fetus

“Good on you, Joan. Pressure does get results sometimes. Witness Beckie Scott of Canada in XC skiing, she won the bronze and then eventually moved up to Gold when Gold and Silver tested positive. I think that “athletes” who cheat should be CRIMINALLY charged, they are in effect stealing from the other athletes. We all know that Regina Jacobs won all kinds of money that as far as I see it she STOLE from those behind her. Same for Ben Johnson, the sums he STOLE run into the hundreds of thousands. At least, here in Canada, something was done.”

Comment by George Muenz — 4/24/2006 @ 11:19 am

p.s. I bet some flunky from the IOC or USOC will give you grief for posting the Olympic rings on your blog. I think you should re-post that graphic with one ring missing to show that it is not complete as a result of the drug use that is covered up.


Beckie Scott with her honestly-won GOLD medal!

(more…)

Dear Mr. Pineau,

I am writing to help in the effort to convince the Denver Federal Court to allow the release of the database of USOC doping records from 1984-2000. I believe the release is vitally important to the integrity and survival of the sport of Track and Field in this country.

I could speak at length on the personal ramifications of this near-criminal drug cover-up. I tried out for 4 Olympic teams over 16 years and finally managed to achieve my dream with a 3rd place finish in the 1996 10,000m Olympic trials, thus making my first and only Olympic team. Since that time, I have learned that two of my competitors (in other distance events) tested positive for drugs and that for all of those 16 years they STOLE world and Olympic team spots away from deserving, clean athletes. Regina Jacobs and Mary Slaney reaped every possible benefit from our sport – and raped the rest of us in the process. Now, I come to realize there may have been even more cheaters ahead of me. More rapists. Why should they be allowed to bask in the glory – false though it is – of being Olympians when who knows how many young men and women … ALL those 4th place finishers (like I was in 1992) … were never able to realize their dream. It is beyond shameful.

Track and field, all sports for that matter, is about dreaming. You dream about running faster, and jumping higher, and throwing farther. You dream about making an Olympic team on every single run. If you take away that dream (and give it to dirty cheaters) then you are left with a bunch of business-men and women who are in the sport ONLY for the money. Not for the dream. How are these crooks any different from the bums at Enron?

I now coach a youth running club in Chapel Hill, NC and I want to be able to encourage each boy and girl that running is a pure sport – the Olympics, a noble pursuit – worth their time and dream energy. But if this drug MESS doesn’t get cleaned up once and for all, if the USOC doesn’t do the right thing and release the truth … the truth, dammit … then a whole generation of track and field athletes will be lost. They will quit, in disgust, after college.

I am not bitter. This is not a personal plea. This is about the sport I love, have loved my entire life. I want to see its rightful heirs – clean and true – take their crowns. If I could, I would throw syringes at every one of the drug-using, money-grubbing, glory-raping bums whose positive drug tests were covered up from 1984 to 2000.

It’s time to do the right thing and set the record straight.

-joan nesbit mabe
us olympian 1996

Look what just popped up in my inbox from an editor at Runner’s World:

Here’s a copy of a letter I sent to the Denver Post (April 13) urging that a USOC database covering doping records from 1984-2000 be released, particularly in fairness to all those fourth-place finishers at the Olympic Trials who might have been Olympians if drug positives had been sanctioned, rather than excused.

If you would like to help the effort to convince the Denver Federal Court to allow the release of the database, please send an e-mail explaining why the release is important to attorney John Pineau who will be fighting the Motion for a Protective Order in Exum v the USOC. His e-mail is johnpineau@yahoo.com.

Thanks,
Janet

Denver Post
To the Editor
c/o openforum@denverpost.com

USOC Should Release Database (195 words)

To the Editor:

What this county needs to combat doping in sports is true transparency. Instead, we’re faced with reactive policies based on media exposés. Instead, we’re faced with the United States Olympic Committee once again trying to hide documents that will shed light on two decades of drug testing. When the USOC tried this tactic in 2002, a media group including CBS and USA Today successfully argued that the documents be released. I urge the Denver Post and other media to make that case again.

The USOC recently filed a motion in Denver Federal Court in Exum v the USOC, seeking a protective order for a database covering doping records from the 1980s and 90s. The reason given was that “embarrassment caused to third parties, including Olympic athletes, by such disclosure is obvious.” Embarrassment? What about fairness to athletes denied a berth on an Olympic team by cheaters? Should the names of baseball players who’ve failed drug tests not be released because it might cause them “embarrassment”?

Until the U.S. fully acknowledges its past, sports will be mired and muddied by headlines and speculation about doping. The truth may hurt, but it will also begin the healing.

Janet Heinonen
Eugene, Oregon

Well, well, well … should I write Mr. Pineau? Is it worth it for me to stir the pot after all these years? I have (almost) laid to rest my anger at Regina Jacobs and Mary Slaney (both busted for drugs, finally) at taking spots on World and Olympic teams … possibly MY Olympic teams … year after year after year … leaving one fewer spot open for clean, honest athletes. But do I want to risk the emotional energy to find out there were even more cheaters in front of me? I was a 4th place Olympic Trials finisher in 1992. What would happen if they released a drug test result from 1992 that proved one of the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place women ahead of me were dirty … actually tested positive 14 years ago, but it was covered up?! I am afraid a volcano of rage would erupt within me and splll out all over my happy family, my contented life.

Dare I write the letter?

You know how you read about some festival, or lecture, or music on the lawn that you really should go to, really do want to go to, but never get around to it? Or how you might hear of an exhibit or a play that’s awesome but when you actually go to buy the tickets the show is sold out or ended its run? Well, since having children this has happened to me more times than I care to admit. In my quotidian routine of driving the kids to and from (and to and from!) school, food, laundry, cleaning, homework, dinner, bath, bed – rinse and repeat – I exist in a personal drought despite the refreshing, cultural waters all around me.

One such event that occurs in nearby Durham, NC is the Full Frame Documentary film festival. Every year I think THIS is going to be the year I make it over there. And every year this amazing four-day film-lover’s smorgasboard comes and goes without my even sampling a morsel … not a sip. It took my 12 year-old daughter to get my tail out the door. When she saw the flyer for it, she said, “Mommy, this looks like something you’d like (damn straight!); why don’t we go?” Well, I can’t possibly, I thought. It’s on a school day. Who will meet the school bus? How can I? I can’t just drop everything and go to the movies in the middle of the day, can I? Huh!? I didn’t SAY all this, of course, but Sarah jane could sense my hesitation (my silent pity party) when I did say, “Do some research and let me know if you find one you want to see.” Ha! I might as well have said, “We’ll see” which always means, “You’ll forget about it, so I won’t have to say NO.” But SJ didn’t forget about it. Oh, no. She found a documentary about asparagus farmers in Oceana County, Michigan that was showing at 12:30pm on a Friday along with a short called, Kings of Christmas that looked interesting.

She called my bluff. SO, I called in a favor for someone to pick up Lizzie from pre-school; I had my husband meet Rosie’s school bus; and I checked Sarah jane out of middle school early that day with the excuse, “enrichment appointment.” Zooming down the highway, skipping school and my mom life, I felt like Thelma and Louise with my daughter/girl friend. We bought, maybe, the last two tickets to the show (because, as it turns out, this was a world premiere for Asparagus! a Stalk-umentary) and I managed to smuggle in two Hershey bars. I spent the next 90 minutes drenched in culture and an overwhelming feeling that I can only describe as an embarrassment of riches.

Asparagus! (a Stalk-umentary)

On public radio today, I heard some reporter estimate there are over a billion people in the blogosphere. It can’t be mere “information exchange” that draws these souls to their flat screens at all hours of the day and night. Is it the need for company? Connection? One friend said we catch up with each other through blogs rather than over a meal (in person) or over the phone … because no one has the time anymore. But, I wonder, how much time do people spend/waste staring at text and images – alone, really, in our rooms or cubicles or bubbles of private laptop space at coffee shops? Too much. We consume “information” on the internet the same way we consume too much fast food and too much stuff at Target and too much gas and too much boring, superficial conversation. Glug glug glug – filling hours and days with a whole lot of nothing. If my computer is on, I can’t NOT look at it … so if any one of my kids happens to enter the room while it’s on, well, they are invisible. This is no good (try saying this while shaking your head with a mock slavic accent … “thees ees snowgood”).

My 4 year-old had a pre-school Easter project where she put a marshmallow inside some dough, pinched the dough all around, then baked it. The marshmallow was to represent Jesus and the dough was his tomb. In the baking, the marshmallow cooks and melts away so that when you break open the bread dough the marshmallow (Jesus) has mysteriously vanished like the risen Christ. I fear too much time on the internet turns one’s life into that marshmallow. You believe you are doing something substancial every time you click on, or log in, or Google search … every time you read some expert’s opinion on whatever current idea is up for consumption. You think your time is being well-spent … surely not wasted. But in your real life – the life of real people (family, friends, co-workers, neighbors) when you break open the dough of your true self … you got nothin’ to give.

But, then again, maybe there is one somebody, somewhere, whose one word – among billions – is enough:

“I am writing at a screen as blue,
as any hill, as any lake, composing this
to show you how the world begins again:
One word at a time.”

- Eavan Boland
from, Against Love Poetry

Is it worth the time it takes to search?
online or off?

In any given work-out, there are several ways to “turn” it to focus on different aspects of your training. Think of a cube. Imagine the cube has a different color for each face. Red, blue, green, etc. for a total of six different faces of the same cube.

For example: The cube = 8-10 X 300m …. also, done as 2 sets of 4-5 X 300m

The 6 faces:

1.) raw speed. Run the 300’s at your top sprinting speed with FULL recovery – waaayyyy faster than race pace. The recovery would be very slow and long (what I call the “Kimmy shuffle,” so named for a friend of mine who barely lifted her knees on these sprint recoveries) in order to bring your maixmum heart rate down below 100 before the next interval. This kind of full anaerobic effort takes longer to recover from in your training week. Raw speed work-outs help you sprint off the starting line and kick at the finish. Distance runners don’t need many work-outs in this “face.”

2.) speed endurance. Run the 300’s fast, but not sprinting – usually done at goal mile pace. The recovery jog is easy but not the Kimmy suffle. If your heart rate was at 180 on the raw speed “face,” it shoud be between 140-160 on the speed endurance 300’s. Recover enough to allow you to keep the times consistent on the 300m. Speed endurace work-outs teach you to maintain form and pace during a distance race.

3.) limited recovery. Run the 300’s fast, but don’t let your heart rate come back down fully before you start the next interval. You will not feel comfortable in this “face” of the cube – that’s the point. Limited recovery work-outs teach you to take pain. As you learn to take more pain, you can progress from 2 sets of 4-5 X 300m to 8-10 X 300m, straight through, with 100 jog (or “float”) recovery. I will often time the whole set to keep me honest on those floats (intervals + recovery; i.e. for 4 X 300m with 100 jog, that would be a full 1,500m timed).

4.) distance – you can incorporate this work-out in the middle of a distance run. After 3-4 miles, do 10 X 1 minute fartlek (60 seconds for 300m is 5:20 mile pace) with 1 minute recovery between each; then contiinue running 3-4 miles for a total of 10-12 miles. The one minute on/one minute off should be a natural feeling in the middle of a distance run … like inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, etc.

5.) taper – I often use 300m downhills in a taper phase. If you run downhill, I have been told, you only use 60% of your energy … so you can have nice leg turnover and that good, fast feeling you need before a race without the actual effort (and subsequent fatigue) of 8-10 X 300m on the track. The downhill should be gradual (you don’t want sore quads from “braking”) and the uphill jog recovery should be quite easy/gentle. *Also, you may use 300’s on the track as a taper work-out. Run them at 10k pace, as extended strides, with easy 200m jog recovery.

6.) relative ease. This is a difficult “face” to explain. I seldom repeat a work-out in a season, but when I do it is so that I will feel the relative ease of the work-out compared to the last time I did it. I may run the exact same times for the 300’s as I did 6-8 weeks earlier, but the perceived effort is much easier. It was relatively easier than the last time I did it. This “face” is crucial to race confidence as you head into your peak.

p.s. of course, you can always do 300m UPhill repeats for strength, but I consider hills a different cube altogether.

I told my daughter that I had a word for those days when you’re unmotivated and your legs are dead … when you pass a golf-course driving range, tennis court, or baseball field on your run, and you think, “This is a stupid sport.” That word is “ifeelishi,” pronounced, “Ah-fill-ah-shee” – but means “I feel like sh__t.” (Unfortunately, I can’t take credit for inventing this word – it comes from the warped mind of Atlanta Track Club legend, Clay Herron, who also coined a favorite phrase of mine, “Don’t sit down or that chair will eat you!” when we were dancing too-late into the night at one of his Peachtree post-race parties).

This one word got me to thinking about one-word definitions or directives.
When describing each distance race, can you narrow it down to just one word?
Here are mine:

800m – form (for true middle-distance runners); grind (for the rest of us)

1,500m/mile – race

3k indoor/3k steeple – attack

5k – endure

10k – rhythm

marathon – conserve

ultra-marathon – pray

tutorials to follow …

If you have 5 or 6 minutes, check out this little documentary of the Chapel Hill Lost and Found art project I participated in: http://www.beerymedia.com/lostfound.htm

I like what the guy had to say about public art. The Chapel Hill arts council could have spent their funding on a massive, commissioned sculpture in some park or business district (which would have involved one artist with us citizens becoming merely passive viewers). Instead, they chose to involve 300 “artists” (“I am not an artist” … eh mis_nomer?), to display the art throughout the city, and to make it truly a community happening.

Americans are becoming increasingly disconnected from one another in our daily lives, so it is necessary – crucial, even – for institutions (such as schools, churches, track clubs …) to provide community events and rituals for connection. In the olden-days (love that expression!), extended family gatherings structured our social lives throughout the year. Seasonal traditions such as a summer beach house with all the cousins, big Thanksgiving dinners with BOTH sets of grandparents, Christmas reunions for faraway relatives, Easter egg hunts followed by Sunday brunch with the neighbors have been replaced by sterile, media-invented get-togethers. What kind of real connections can be made during commercial breaks of the Superbowl? Are you really friends with someone when your primary bonding experience is watching Friends together on TV every week? It’s bizarre. I admire my father-in-law for doing his part to build and maintain community in his neck of the woods. Every fall he invites friends, neighbors, and family to an old-fashioned Chicken Stew in his backyard. He provides chicken and Saltines, cold beer, and a blazing bonfire. I look forward to seeing familiar faces and even hearing the same stories every October. It makes me feel not-so-alone on this planet.

Hearing that mom on the documentary speak about her scattered life – then seeing the art she created out of that chaos – made me feel profoundly connected to this “stranger” who was like me … a mother, a fellow-artist, a citizen, a human being struggling to find and make meaning.

“I tell you: one must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star.”
-Nietzsche
from, Thus Spake Zarathustra

We have a fresh addition to Team Wednesday! There’s a new kid on the block … and I do mean KID. Mostly Fleet Feet-sponsored Team Wednesday is known around town as John Hinton’s training group, but over the last few months it has seen some curious changes. The regulars are John, Jason, and Dave … with Jim joining in between marathons and ultra races (mostly for warm-ups and cool downs b/c he prefers “cruise miles” on his track days). A superfast physician, former Ivy League track-man, Rob, runs with the gang when his wife lets him [oooh, I can't believe I just typed that sentence - we all know that's not fair to say. I guess I "let" Dave run every Wednesday, because he is the relay-er of work-outs when I can't make it]; and, of course, there’s Alex, whom I wrote about earlier.

The group has a pretty nice mix of different ages and ability levels with the common denominator being a genuine love of running. Of course, I wish there were some women out there on Wednesday – but its hard to find serious post-collegiate female runners these days (why is that?). Most women run for “fitness” and friendship, eschewing the intense training required to run fast or finish high up in races. I once formed an all-women’s elite training group in Chapel Hill … but it only lasted for a year. The group included:

myself
two-time Olympic Trials marathon qualifier, Betsy Kempter
NCAA 3,000m champion and world XC member, Nnenna Lynch
former Villanova standout and relay Olympian (from Antigua), Kim Certain
future superstar and UNC All-American, Blake Phillips (now Russell)
and a few gals who came and went … i.e. one NC State grad. who showed up for one week then never returned because (I heard she said), “It’s too hard.”

Sadly, we all went our separate ways after one year, but I am proud that I even attempted to create a training group of women coached by a woman.

So, back to the present day and the fresh face at the track on Wednesday nights.
His name is Taylor Gilland. 9th grader. Intense. Fearless. Voracious appetite for pain and glory. Genius student of the sport. Wise, old soul … and so much more. Watching him run with wild limbs circling and churning, neck pushed too-forward like a racehorse stretching for the finish, makes me think of Plato’s line, “Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.” One would be a fool to try to change this kid’s form – all the extraneous motion will smooth out on its own as he seeks ever more efficient ways to shave another second off his time. Nothing’s going to hold this kid back. Nothing. Remember his name. Taylor Gilland.

Check out his finish, as a high school FRESHMAN, at the Stanford Invite last week-end:

boys 3000 Meter Run :
================================================================
Name Year School Finals
================================================================
1 Ben Sitler SR St. Frncis-MV 8:33.42
2 Marcos Corona JR Willow Glen 8:37.20
3 Elliott Heath JR Winona 8:37.74
4 Dan Geib SR Galena 8:38.54
5 Jake Matthews SR Folsom 8:39.22
6 Marlon Patterson SR Franklin 8:41.12
7 Ryan Lewis SR Ygnacio Vly 8:42.91
8 Chris Vizcaino SR Campolindo 8:45.43
9 Brendan Gregg JR Davis Senior 8:45.81
10 Brad Doering JR Yuba City 8:46.21
11 Albert Davila JR Upland 8:46.72
12 Robbie Knorr JR Valley Chstn 8:50.91
13 Dylan Coleman SR Summit 8:51.68
14 Mohamed Abdalla SO Willow Glen 8:53.17
15 Matthew Petrillo JR Los Gatos 8:54.12
16 Taylor Gilland FR East Chapel 9:00.03
17 Ivan Alfaro SR North Monter 9:00.66
18 Nick Alvarado SR St. Ignatius 9:00.77
19 Phil McKennan JR Jesuit 9:01.70
20 Patrick Lynch JR Davis Senior 9:02.03
21 Andy Burich JR Los Gatos 9:05.52
22 Alex Mansoor JR Oak Ridge 9:06.89
23 Jayson Hayes SR Edison-Hunti 9:07.22
24 Kevin Schneider SR Fremont 9:07.44
25 Francis Reynolds SR Palo Alto 9:08.32
26 Brian Chow SO Granada 9:10.35
27 Rigo Vasquez JR San Benito 9:10.40
28 Alec Nickolls JR Los Altos 9:11.24
29 Doug Whichard JR Granada 9:12.18
30 Josh Ruff JR Oak Ridge 9:12.90
31 Scott Donahue JR Jesuit 9:13.41
32 Scott Himmelberger SR Palo Alto 9:16.89
33 Andy Dryden SO Mullen 9:16.98
34 Max Fernandez JR Edison-Hunti 9:17.97
35 Scott Halliday SR Davis Senior 9:18.56
36 Gary Stroup SR Rancho Verde 9:20.06
37 Royce Hyland SR Boise 9:21.06
38 Cooper Meacham JR Edison-Hunti 9:21.97
39 Joe Johnstone SR Burlingame 9:27.55
40 Alex Yonas SR Logan 9:34.02

* * *
Procrastination
post-vacation
requires some p.m. caffeination.
Java juice is bad for tummy
full of travel junk
and gummy
bears
in need of ex-tri-ca-tion.
(I ant alk ith inger in outh)

Midnight buzz is hell on mommy
who must rise
and shine
for tommy
timmy, dick and harry
lizzie lou or baby mary.

Get out there and run, you slob.
You’re wasting time ..
what rhymes with blog?
(ob og, lob log, brown cow?)

I mean it;
Now!
(okay okay)
or else you’ll miss another day.

It will exact great concentration
to give up this consternation
over words and letter fun.
TTFN; its time to run.