Liberty and justice for all

This story is a few weeks old but I only just encountered it this morning. Kids like Will and my nephews and no doubt others you know who are such incredibly smart, perceptive and compassionate people give me hope for the future of our country and the world. Hopefully the conditions causing Will's objection to the wording of the Pledge will be remedied. Hopefully we won't have to wait for him to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court first.

At seventeen, you learn the truth

This video makes me cry. Sometimes people are so terribly dear, hobbling valiantly along, while other people cheer and ring cowbells, for no logical reason, they're all just compelled to do it. Though I did just get back from a 17-mile training run, and a client recently told me that running makes your brain release its own personal stash of cannabinoids. Or something like that, he didn't really go into the neurochemistry of it. No wonder I have so many brilliant ideas while I'm running and can't remember them later. So it's possible that I'm high. But you still just have to love people to bits sometimes. My favorite is the older gent with the dark green shirt and light green shorts (or was it the other way around?) He's really booking along. At some point the person shooting the video says the runners going by are looking to finish in 4 hours. That made me cry too. That'll be me in LESS THAN FOUR WEEKS. Dude. What? I'm hungry.

A truth universally acknowledged

No better prequel to a month of novel writing than to be a great Character for Halloween. Thanks to "Time Traveler Costumes" here in town I was able to hire most of the key articles, but some were already in my possession. In the course of the Holiday weekend, I:

• gave flowers to an elegant Lady
• was delivered from peril by a young Scholar
• attended a Country Ball
• was asked if the Sideburns were "real or fake"
• became Famous somewhere in China
• wrote about 1300 Words
• ran 18 Miles (in two days)
  
• ate no small Quantity of Candy

In all, an excellent weekend.

eat and / or be eaten

This is a wonderful concept of broad application - nature and the food chain; a zombie attack; and if, say, Jonah of Biblical fame had enjoyed sushi. Unfortunately for the 'big fish' [NOT a whale, they always insisted in Sunday School, because as we all know, whales have TEENY TINY throat openings by which they filter their krill, so a whale could not have possibly swallowed Jonah, and it's very important to apply Occam's Razor-sharp rational thought processes to Bible stories because so many readers of the Bible have a seriously impaired grasp of metaphor. In fact, Jonah made his home in the abdomen of an Ichthyosaur like the 40-foot long fossil in Nevada, off I-50 - the "Loneliest Road in America." I've been wanting to go see for a long time. Oh - but that can't be, I just read on Wikipedia that the Ichthyosaurus was not actually a fish. If God had wanted the story to say that Jonah was gulped down whole by a giant marine reptile, that's what it would have said. Never mind.]

As I was saying, unfortunately for the big fish Jonah was indigestible and caused it acute gastric distress.

I still love this fish story though. I've acted it out now and again...the longer you avoid things you really have to do, the more your life conspires to make you do them, to a degree that can feel a little dark and cramped. I've evaded / avoided / excused myself from some work it seems I really need to do, for whatever reason. So now I find myself single with a social life consisting primarily of a dog, a cat, Facebook, some emails, and a phone call now and then, and I'm totally frigging broke, and the market for jobs that might help that problem is a bit...tight, let's say.

National Novel Writing Month begins in one week. I've never wanted so much to avoid doing something I so much want to do. Because because because because because. I have no narrative! I have no outline! I don't know who the people are! Don't you have to know these things? What if I manage to write every day for 30 days, and end up with random pieces of 30 different stories? What if I lose all control over the process and become really deranged, like Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now?" Or the guy from "The Wall" who smashes everything in the hotel room and spells words on the carpet with the fragments?

Okay, it probably won't be quite that bad. The worst I can imagine is that I might be driven to holler and cuss. This is the girl who, in high school, was too self-conscious even to yell during football games. I've come a long way. Trust me on that one.

"NaNoWriMo," if I manage to participate, will not fix anything, but it would be a reasonable use of the opportunities currently presented. I don't know about Jonah but I do love sushi. How do you eat a very big fish? One slice at a time, with wasabi. Doesn't get any fresher than this.

Greased Lightnin'

I decided to take Ripley on the 3-mile jogging loop this morning, so we could both get our exercise in. When Rip decides she wants to go in a particular direction, she can go very fast, but we don't always agree about the direction. When this happens it gives the appearance that I'm strangling my poor little dog by selfishly trying to run with her dragging behind when her stubby legs can't keep up with me. Ha. So with that in mind I don't generally expect our runs together to break any speed records. When I'm on the path in the park I tend to keep her on a leash because she hasn't quite learned to move aside for bicycles - actually she seems inclined to deliberately obstruct them, if it's up to her. For running I use a leash that clips to my waist, for better balance. And sometimes a pull into town.

This morning there was a little bit of disagreement, early in the run, due to some interesting activity happening on the path behind us. Ripley doesn't like having other dogs behind her, must be a herding thing. But then she decided that her interests lay ahead and took off. She was pulling me along at probably at least a 7:30 / mile clip for a good hundred yards or so, then we finally slowed down a little. Finished 3 miles in 26:53, averaging an 8:52 / mile pace. Not bad for a short dog!

That's right.

So many books, so much time

My Zen teacher / friend Lin Jensen is giving a talk and reading from his books next Saturday. It just occurred to me that although I'm familiar with selections from his books, because he shares from them occasionally in his weekly talks at the Chico Zen Sangha (which meets upstairs at Trinity United Methodist Church every Wednesday night, a true interfaith experience), I've not yet read any of them all the way through. I'm such a fan of Lin and his writing, and the Sangha has been so helpful for me, that this seems a rather glaring omission. I guess it's time to go pay my fines at the library and work on remedying this lapse. I have an old pattern of going to the library, getting very excited about several books that I'm sure will be utterly life-changing or will prop up my literary ego in some way, bringing them home, reading parts of some of them (maybe) and keeping them until they're all overdue. Still, it's much cheaper to do this at a library than at a bookstore. I think I owe the Butte County Library about $5.00 right now.

Audio books have helped a lot. I churn through those pretty fast. Our local library has a limited selection of books on CD, but when I discovered Audible.com it broadened the horizons enormously. Unfortunately Lin's books haven't made it to Audible yet.  I'll have to sit down and read, and not try to do two or three things at once. Psh. It's a buddhist conspiracy.