Trash

It's been a little while. But you must be patient because life is slowing down. And when it slows down you have to be patient. (i'm trying to speed it up by listening to techno/club/brain frying music whilst blogging)

I'm on my mother's computer. I have scheduled a Mac fix it guy to come to our house and murder us, that, or fix my computer. I'm very excited. I believe in cyborgs and the identity issues surrounding them. (see further reading "Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway). My cell phone has only a car charger (dependence on dependence). And so, I feel that one contraption is stealing another from me. My cell phone not being so much a contraption as very much a part of me. (it doesn't bother me that thousand others have the same phone (we all have eyes don't we?)) And with my computer on the fritz, I don't feel quite whole.

It's sunny today. Let's keep that in mind.

Ok, I like pop music. It may be shitty, yes. But I like it. And this crap club techno stuff. Hmm. I like it too. Sometimes. Like right now. But that's because I spent Friday night in a club. A sweaty, sketchy, modern day Bacchus. And I have such adoration for Dionysus and the bacchan tradition, as we all know, that my helpless affinity for 'clubbing' as one might call it, can be understood and found endearing. Yes. it's endearing. I need to start bringing a change of clothes to clubs. I'm that gross and also, unashamed (to all of you who might be experiencing a swelling of revulsion as you read this).

Moving on. I started 3 books yesterday. Mainly because the first two didn't quite catch my mood. Murakami, well, seemed Murakami but without the brilliance of Norwegian Wood. And Joyce, well, hmm. I would need more patience. So I finally settled on Nabokov. Both Joyce and Nabokov seem a bit similar to me. And the stretches, leaps or innovations on style (they're both proclaimed as great stylists (not of hair)), provoked my thought to wander to literature in general and what was going on in their time period and comparing it with now. This happens often with me and rarely ends well. The question I sort of landed on again was this: Is the world too big for literature? which really is a host of others questions...what sort of audience could you address? What is an audience anymore? blah blah, this will get boring. So I'm cutting it off.

Ok I wrote the above a few days ago. I gave up because it was going nowhere and well, I just don't feel like posting insubstantial shit (just don't tell me that's what this blog consists of).

I really don't have anything new to report. But, I'm back on my own computer! Which, is really a huge plus. I love my computer, lovvvvve it. I'm also enjoying Nabokov and it's also sunny again today. AND!

I did an ab routine and went for a run today. Two things I haven't done in a long while. And boy did it feel awful. I could feel my fat jiggle on my stomach while i was running. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to never let that happen again. It was simply awful. Awful.

So that and what? Still no updates on my life. I'm still unemployed with no notions of a job. Still, stuck in some malaise of thinking/reading. Nothing inspirational, nothing blah. Just nothing. Which is fine I suppose. But boring.

I'm getting the itch to travel again (which people told me might happen). I really want to go to France. One of the places I was considering instead of New Zealand. Especially now that we're coming into summer. The sad part is, that I'm pretty much completely out of money. *THIS! is why people get jobs* I get it. But, yeah, I'm trying to keep those feelings from getting out of control, because I feel like its a trick. As soon as I leave, I'll miss home just like I was at the end of my travels.

sorry, another interruption, I had to have an impromptu dance party with Lilly. She likes The Way You Make Me Feel by Michael Jackson, but she's not really impressed by anything else. So we're currently dancing to Shrek's Dance Party, which so far, is simply Disco Songs being performed by the voices of the Shrek Characters...

I'm planning a visit to Whidbey this weekend. It should gimme something to write about, considering the simple thought of the place excites me so much. I get obsessed. There's something definitely strange about being there. How much it affects me. I don't know if it's because its the only house we (as a family) own that I remember from childhood. I lived with my mother all while growing up and she moved back to the Northwest after I left Iowa. So my 'childhood' home is gone in Iowa. And since we didn't move back into the same house we left 13+ years ago when she came back, I don't have a home here I remember either. My grandparents moved to a new home and I never spent any time at my aunts and uncles. They've all moved too though. So my only 'home' home is this Whidbey house. And I guess a lot of emotional baggage gets dumped on it. But in a good way. I'm so excited to go there. It'll be grand. And being there with people I enjoy pretty much maxes out Sean's happy factor. So, whoo hoo! Right?

Ok, I'll leave it at that. There's enough garbage on here as it is...

Finally and somewhat Regrettably, some ruminations on Quenton Cassidy

So you'd think my mom would know better than to tell me to meet them in a Barnes&Noble. I already have a couple books in my possession on deck to be read but of course, loitering in a bookstore waiting for family members my kryptonite started to work and voila, I have four new books added to my list. Some Chekov (to continue my Russian theme), some Cervantes and some Joyce. I finished Again to Carthage though, so that's one down. I now have those new books plus my Murakami, Huxley, and Nabakov. Perfect, I'm set. Enough about books.

My stomach, for all you concerned people out there, is doing much better, which means my mood is better, which means I can start leaving the house on small errands, which means my mood is better, which probably somehow means my stomach is better. So yeah. My tan is slowly fading under the suction of the grey Seattle skies. And the $72 Virgin America tickets from Seattle to Los Angeles are looking damn good right now.

I'm still playing the unemployment game (duh, cause it's fun). And wandering through an entire gigantic Crate&Barrel (what's with all these ampersand business names) just sighing and dreaming of have a little apartment to furnish with all this expensive shit. No actually, I enjoy walking through stores like in order to gather ideas, and it makes me happy that you can fashion most of the shit in there from old or cheaper products. Which is what I do. Especially now that I have at least SOME experience in handiwork. Yeehaw.

In order to aid in my colonial guilt, Bigelow Tea Company has so cleverly named their mint tea "Plantation Mint", thank you. I'm really going to enjoy drinking this now. Also, everyone look at a 'to scale' map of the world and acknowledge how ridiculous it is that Hawaii is a state.

My six year old sister was in charge of dinner the other night. We had baby carrots and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I couldn't help laughing at the sight of my parents and I lifting our PB&J's and beginning to eat together. This laughter precipitated my little sister running from the table to her room. I don't feel bad. While I'm on the topic of my small children: Dancing with the Stars has taken over my family. So anyway, I was watching it with them (it's actually really entertaining) and from somewhere (certainly not anywhere from my family) my little sister has picked up an acute fashion sense and judges almost everything she sees on TV by it. People are good or bad based on how fashionable they are, etc. So one of the professional dancers was dancing a mamba or something and came out in this skimpy dress with a little foo-foo tail thing and my sister, gasps as she sees it and says "oh you've got to get rid of that thing, girl". My eyeballs went belly up and I muttered Good Lord in Heaven.

It only makes sense that I of all people would end up with above and beyond quintessential stereotypical Girl (in every sense of the gendered word) for a sister and while I have fewer stories to back it up, the EXACT same on the other side with my six year old brother. Is it backlash from the early days of me insisting on blurring the gender definitions they struggling to consolidate in toddlerdom? I suppose it could be a lesson learned, and certainly a good one to learn before I actually have my own children. In fact, having young siblings is a great warm-up to parenthood. Because duh, now that I'm a college graduate, parenthood should be my life focus (even as a boy). See what I did there?

So it's morning and I've already gotten off on a ranting type topic, I promised I would do a slight book review (or gut reaction) to Again to Carthage, my recently completed book. And to be sure, I was quite ready to when I was about 3/4 of the way through it. But now that I've finished, reacted to it, not thought about it and let a day or two pass I'm not sure my reaction will be that accurate or fruitful, but let's take a stab at it and see what's been simmering in my subconscious the last two days...(or day, I'm unemployed, is this a...what day is it?)

Can we discuss Again to Carthage without bringing in Once a Runner? Well that's a stupid cliche question, so duh, no. But, I don't want to bring OAR into the discussion too much at large, but simply as a background upon which we can draw Again to Carthage. So. Quenton Cassidy, the protagonist for both books. In OAR, this college-aged elite runner striving for collegiate glory could only speak so straightly to me. However, what I find riveting about Parker's creation of this character in the narrative poem that is OAR, is the way in which the entire novel is focused on specifically the character of this person. When I've been asked to describe the book or "tell me about it"s I've struggled to explain...partially because there isn't much of a plot line in the book (ok, so we're going to talk about OAR for a bit). That's not necessarily true, but when you read OAR, the quality, virtue, and importance of the book, isn't really in the action (well, ok come to think of it, is it ever in a really good novel?) So, the plot story is boring and really, there isn't much to it. That's because the book is an explanation of mysterious personality. A personality we in the running circle know very well, either from teammates or at least a quarter part of ourselves. For those non-runners who read it and know runners, the protagonist becomes so very much alive. I've had non-runners say to me numerous times, "I totally understand a lot of shit with X so much better now" type things. And it's true. Quenton grabs you. Even if he doesn't, it's then a semi-exciting sports novel about a sport that I think rarely gets written about, but regardless. Quenton Cassidy is created through narrative statements. And its strange, because the statements don't really move the plot along. The narrator isn't really narrating anything. There's no story being told. It's like a poetic profile of a certain person. Full of sentences like, Quenton Cassidy, is..... Quenton Cassidy believes this...And so the novel is simply actively drawing a personality that hasn't really ever before received so much attention. And of course, Parker gets it right on. There are bits of the novel where Cassidy does things and says things that add to the creation of his character (duh) but the majority is certainly in the direct statements. Ok. So, we get this beautiful description of Quenton Cassidy, the long distance runner (or miler, if you will) but Parker also respects the fact that the runner is an essentially veiled and mysterious being (alright, I'll concede that humanity is, but as far as literary characters go, the runner remains so....) and so Parker leaves much of Quenton Cassidy veiled. In a certain sense Quenton Cassidy's mystery and incomprehensibility is beautifully dressed with importance, nobility, and all other kind of virtue (so no wonder its palatable for us runners eh?) But Quenton Cassidy is never *really* explained. So here comes my first, well I don't even know if its a complaint...

Again to Carthage, could have started on page 180. In fact, I probably would've liked it much better had it started on Page 180. The first 180 pages are backstory. Parker is catching us up on the gap in Quenton's life between novel 1 and novel 2. He's raced in the Olympics, he's gone to law school, he's been practicing law for a while, etc. And in this catch up, Parker does not utilize the same style of revelation as he does in OAR. In fact, Quenton Cassidy's 'separatedness' from any other literary character, or one with which you could wholly relate, or really human (i'd argue that Quenton's OAR is a deified Quenton, i.e. he's not human) is destroyed in Again to Carthage. Which as my mom points out, could be the point. And yeah, I'll allow, not necessarily, agree, but allow it. I don't like it, even if somewhere I do or agree with it, I don't like seeing my God humanized, normalized, and utterly boring. OAR was not concerned with real life, it was concerned with the conception of Quenton Cassidy. Every bit of information about Quenton Cassidy was handpicked to be romantic, to be inhuman, godly, and utterly ideal. AND I LOVED IT. But in the first 180 pages of Again to Carthage we see Quenton Cassidy as human, and we get inside his head as opposed to observing him. This is the perspective change from OAR to the first half of ATC. And I don't want to be that close to Cassidy. But anyway. So we see Quenton is lawyer and gets bored with his job, we see he has workplace shenaningans like everyone else, we see his vulgar human weakness with Andrea his ex-girlfriend (not the romantic tragic beautiful godly weakness we observe in him in regards to Andrea in the first novel). And really its just depressing. He's just so....normal. And rightly so, he's stopped running, or training shall I say. He goes for jaunts when he can, he stays in pretty good shape, but as the second half of the book attests, there's difference between running and training.

Sorry, this is getting long and probably not at all interesting for those of you who haven't read the books or don't care.

But then. After page 180, Quenton decides to shed the ennui of his non-athlete life (there's also a difference between being athletic and being an athlete) and try to tackle the marathon. With vague and conditional notions of qualifying for the Olympic Marathon Team. However, after page 180, we see Parker revert to his OAR style. We see him step back outside Quenton Cassidy and view him again as this incomprehensible yet familiar person residing somewhere within every athlete that is striving for the impossible with an uncanny likelihood of achieving it. What could be sweeter? So we see Quenton tackle training again, we see him become deified, we see him from outside. His internal monologues become scarce, other people's views of him become more prevalent and we see the Cassidy I loved to read about in OAR. So. The second half of the book is great (i know right?). The marathon while perhaps a bit of stretch, is unbelievably exciting to read and the final gut twister at the end of the book that so thinly disguisedly points at Parker himself brings home EXACTLY the source of this Quenton Cassidy, namely, that idealized version of the runner as s/he sees in her/himself. There is nothing one can do but love it. It's exactly Quenton Cassidy that runners the nation over tap into at the end of race, it's exactly Quenton Cassidy that runners feel complete a badass workout, it's exactly that internal idealized runner that somehow accomplishes what is normally regarded as impossible. Because thats one of the basic things about running right? One of the very first phenomenons. You can do way more than you thought you could. And who does it exactly? Quenton Cassidy.


wow.

that just came out. but i think it's right. sorry to everyone who is currently thinking, what the hell?



i'm taking Lilly to the Seattle Art Museum to get some capital C culture today. Damn, sorry, I'm gonna have to go think about OAR and ATC some more....

Books

So I'm back from Mexico. I know everyone has been waiting for a blog update. But I must say, the blogosphere has been mighty quiet lately. I've checked my usual round of fav blogs and there's not too much there (not to detract from those of you who have written). So, I don't feel that bad.

So I pulled my abdominal muscles trying to be God knows what, and working out on vacation. I went to the resort gym and grabbed the biggest medicine ball they had and sat down on the severely inclined ab bench and began doing "exercises". Well, not only did I wake up sore the next day, but it turns out I've pulled my ENTIRE core. So now my belly is swollen (like a lot), I can't fit into any of my pants (like seriously swollen, 3 or more inches) and I'm stuck in sweatpants with an extremely tender pudge pod that hurts when I even slightly bend over. So that sucks. Also, can I just say that I took one of those online surveys for a friends psych study or something a while back about blogging and every time I've EVER mentioned anything about my health or body on my blog I can't help thinking about a question on the survey asking how often you discussed your personal health on the blog. Well, reading that question I reacted as thus "who the hell would blog about shit like that? Obviously, people who are really insecure or whiny, or generally the type of people I would find tedious at a dinner party"...well hah?. Apparently I've blogged about my health WAY more than I responded on the survey. That goes to show how accurate psych surveys can be I guess.

Anyway, none of that is important. I've got two new books I'm starting because I finally finished Anna Karenina. It got a bit long to be honest. It was 817 pages. Which is fine, but I think I approached in the wrong attitude. Anna Karenina is something you participate with for a while (i think the original format probably helped with this) but it's more like a TV show or series that stays with you for a while. It's not like a sit down and ready a story type mentality that I take with me on most trips to the literary world. This one I had to remind myself that several multiple major climaxes and subsequent denouements are possible and the story can continue. Once Anna confessed to her husband about her liaison with Vronsky, I thought we could've skipped to the end. And once Anna was resolved I thought the plot with Levin took longer to resolve than was necessary. And while going into the novel I knew that the reviews or secondary scholarship shall we say said that it was interesting novel because we come to pity Anna or whatever, I found that I did not at all pity Anna and actually, I couldn't really relate with her either. I did go through the stages of pitying the other characters, where I could tell I was supposed to as well, but grew out of it, also, in a timely fashion. But I must say, pity for Anna never fully grounded itself in me, especially toward the end when her fear of Vronksy's "cooling off" becomes a mania. I did however, consistently relate with Levin but since he was a fairly well grounded side story (as in not fading ever but never really assuming prime prominence) I didn't find it all that entertaining. So, meh, I wouldn't say it was a bad novel, but I don't immediately get the feeling to rant and rave and epigraphize and reference Anna or the novel twists in subsequent thought/work. Maybe I will, who knows. i think Tolstoy's view on the novel as a literary form is quite interesting though, which was spoken about briefly in a preface or something.

So I finally bought and have started reading "Again to Carthage" the sequel to my personal bible, as backstory for the rest of you "normal" people. Once a Runner by John L. Parker Jr., has become a cult classic in the long distance running world. It was published in 1978. Now, the rest of this might be rumor (wikipedia didn't give me any info, and to be honest, i don't want this myth/reality to be broken for me). John L. Parker, couldn't get his book published, nobody would pick it up and so he published it himself and sold copies out of the trunk of his car at the track meets he would travel around to (he was a runner himself). And, thus, it became a cult classic and was finally picked up by a publisher. It has since gone out of print, but is, like I said, my personal Bible, because, duh, its amazing. So anyway, 1978 is when it came out, 2008 is when the sequel finally came out. So, I'm reading it, and its shit. I don't know if its just my copy or what, but there are TONS of editing mistakes. Ugh, and then there's the detail discrepancies, like the one I pointed out in a sneak peak over the creation of Cassidy's nickname. And plus, currently I'm 100 pages in, and it's boring. Boring. so, pretty much everything I expected. Whatever. It's not one of the two new books I've picked up.

Numero Uno- I'll admit is shamelessly picked up because two people I respect have talked about it, so curiousity got the best of me and I've picked up Nabakov's Laughter in the Dark.

Numero Dos- One of my favorite contemporary authors is Haruki Murakami mainly because of Norweigan Wood (close to second favorite book maybe) and so I read another one of his books to test my esteem of him. Well it wasn't as good as Norweigan Wood (hard-boiled wonderland...) but, I liked it nonetheless, so I've picked up another one, one that is highly acclaimed as well: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I have yet to try Kafka on the Shore, a book I had heard of before reading Norweigan Wood but had no idea Murakami had written it. Sooo yeah.

I may end up picking up Norweigan Wood again. I just love it and thinking about it again has made me want to read it again. We'll see. I'll try these two new ones, while trying to get over my stupid swollen belly.

sorry I got distracted watching Mariah Carey videos. My mom was reading an article about her in People (sigh) and so I thought I would enrich her experience by playing some beats by the one and only. My mom hates Mariah Carey.

Ok, I've lost my trains of thought (yes there are more than one). Maybe some other topic will interest you more. but you'll have to tell me about it because, as much as unemployment is great for your free time, it doesn't always structure your thought. Or lead to exciting adventures (sorry Zeke). Maybe once I'm not bedridden.

Viva la Mexico

i'm in mexico on a beautiful sandy beach with a jacuzzi in my room. I'll probably not post for the rest of the week. Suckas.

Coddling Cuckolds

I'm sorry it's been so long. I have had almost zero alone time since my last post. What with people sleeping over, me sleeping over, people hanging out for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and hot tub parties in the evenings I'm really quite incapable of slowing down, sitting, down, and reflecting which we all know, are prerequisites for writing. ....maybe? Well, for writing that I feel like doing yes.

My life has been in a limbo for a while now and while I can deal with that fairly well, I believe my anxiety about my future is going to get the best of me quite soon. I am anxious to settle, to move on, to whatever. I'm anxious to either have a job or not have a job, I'm excited to either be in SF or NY or not. I guess I'm just ready for decisions. Pretty much my whole life is up in the air right now. I'm really excited to get settled so I can pursue things, like grad school, etc. Playing around and doing nothing is fun, but it also is difficult for me to do the things I also enjoy (which don't fall under lying on the beach, drinking with friends, and aimlessly wandering through space). I'm having troubles getting my ass out on the road to run even though I'm in shape enough to do so without too much discomfort. I am having troubles finishing Anna Karenina (I think that's partly due to the lack of alone time) and certainly, while I've had some intellectual conversations and I've been more or less stretching my academic limbs again, I'm certainly not to the point where I feel "back into it". Let's think of it this way: I'm ready to POUNCE. but that position is getting a bit achy at the moment.

It's been fantastic weather in LA for the past few weeks and I really appreciate it, like a lot. And, I've had a great time driving around LA and getting reacquainted and getting to know other parts. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on LA and let's be honest, I'm going to be damn sad to leave it (if I do).

I get to see my mom's side of the family (and my mom) SO soon. In fact, on Saturday. Which, will be the first time since the end of July. That's a pretty long time. This is really good news and I can't wait. And what better time/place to have a reunion than on vacation? When nobody is stressed, there's nobody else making claims for your time, it's just you and the fam at a socially guilty, privileged paradise.

I probably have some images I could write down. But I'm not even alone now, but being a distraction by writing on someone else's computer in someone else's room, just sort of getting in the way, but I felt bad about my lack of posts and have a feeling I may not be able to update that often while out of the country. There are a couple that I think will make you laugh and others that will make you cry, and still others that will make you realize all the important things in life and rekindle lost loves while gripping you in the depths of your soul at the inherent tragedy of existence. Have we ever thought I wasn't audacious?

Also, as if we didn't know, I LOVE words. I was caught perusing the dictionary the other day. oh. I had another weird phenomenon happen to me the other day. I can't remember anything about the context, so make one up for yourselves. But anyway, so, you know how sometimes you get stuck talking to someone you have no interest in listening to, and you are incapable of getting out of the conversation, so you're stuck politely trying to keep interest, or at least the facade of interest, all the while there's that nagging voice in the back of your head complaining to high-heaven about this loquacious chatterbox. Ok, well this happened to MYSELF the other day. Which is tricky right, because being the same person, you can't really hide the little voice in your head, nor the emotional agony at having to listen. And it was so strange because, half of me WAS in emotional agony having to listen to myself, and was complaining about myself, WHILE at the SAME time, I was feeling indignant at myself for having such a reaction, like shocked at the rudeness of myself to dismiss myself so. it was weird. The scary thing however, was that I came out of the phenomenon on the side of me that didn't want to listen, thinking cunningly and slyly, how I could better hide my utter lack of interest in myself. Ridiculous.

people may think I'm crazy, but I'm not, I just notice the shit that happens to you too, but you don't realize. (comforting story, eh?)

i think for this family trip to mexico, i'm going to bring my bathing suit, a t shirt and the rest of my bag will be full of books. I just don't think i would need anything else. wow, somehow this post became a substantial length. i don't feel so horrible now. Although, it was rather empty, I at least put some empty promises in there to keep you guys strung along. No comments=no posts, suckas. Especially now that I'm back in the States and blogging is a bit more difficult. so yeah. YEAH.

Most Recent Word I Had to Look Up: Pernicious--ruinous, injurious, deadly, fatal
Most Recent Word I Gave a False Definition To Someone: Cuckold--husband of an unfaithful wife
Definition I Gave: like coddle but with a tinge of deception ( so I wasn't THAT far off :) )


P.S. I am really perturbed at the degree to which my consideration of online dating has gotten serious.

Thought of the Day: why does it feel so wrong to poop in a girl's bathroom?

Desert Dilettante

I've been back for a while now. It's still been good. I've had the opportunity to pretty much pick life up where it left off so drastically in May. Spending time lounging at the pool, deciding, when, to walk up to the beach volleyball court and relaxing in the hot tub in the evenings. Floating from social engagement to social engagement and generally just living the life I did at Pomona. And, it's been pretty great. Amongst my alumni friends there's a fairly distinct split between those who have an aversion to our, oh so recent, collegiate lifestyle and those who still hold some melancholy at the irksome nature of change.

I think the groups annoy each other.

I miss college, I miss that lifestyle, I miss what I had. And that's completely fair, because wandering around Pomona, I'm forced to shake my head with incredulity. Was I really allowed to live for four years in this place? Did I really spend four years here? Does this place actually exist? It's a flippin' dream world. Sometimes I just can't believe it. It's one of those times in my life where I feel like forces are conspiring in my favor.

Anyhow, I went on a run with the team the other day. A run I had never done. We piled into the 16 passenger van and drove out to the Pacific Crest Trail out off the 215. It was windy as hell. Dave, was struggling to keep the van in our lane and being the night after Smiley 80s, everyone in the van, couldn't care less. It was early in the morning but the sun was shining and it looked to be a warm day. When we reached the trail head the wind whipped with such ferocity that the sun was powerless to warm us. In skimpy shorts and a Dri-Fit shirt, I huddled into myself trying to reduce the area of my body exposed the the wind and desperately conserve body heat. We launched off as a large group toward the trail head from the van. My head still thick and unresponsive from the night before I immediately lost any thread of conversation within the group and chose the caboose, attempting to keep the whole group together. The trail was single track forcing us to string out into a long train of swishing legs. The first couple miles wound through a rocky canyon with a small stream in the trough and an old man panning for gold, seriously. Large reddish boulders loomed on either side of us giving respite against the silent but persistent wind.

Emerging from the canyon a desert wonderland spread before our eyes, with layers upon layers of soft hills criss crossing our panorama. Plains scattered here and there, dotted with scraggly desert chaparral. Directly in front of us stood a large tall hill scarred with a winding yellowish band. This is where we were headed. And scampering across dry river beds and a small plain we began our climb at the foot of the desert hills. Treading through the contours of the hill, inward, outward, around and back but constantly up, we traded parries with the wind. We crossed ridges that fell off sharply on either side and with every footfall stones and pebbles attempted to resettle. Clinging to the air we struggled to keep our footing on the narrow path, wishing for a more solid body frame that might provide better resistance to desert wind. Once atop the hill and circling around the back, down, down, we saw from a distance our mountains, but from a different view. Our mountains looked majestic from this new angle. Their backsides towering tall and gleaming in the desert sun, proudly bearing their snowy caps. But it wasn't more than a glimpse, we snaked down the hill into a gentle canyon. The wind didn't follow and we cruised through the flats of the desert, alone, dry and under the sun. Between snippets of conversation that never quite developed into anything consistent or substantial, all one heard was the grinding of rubber and rock. Climbing now and again the desert encompassed our vision and we could only stare out into the unending wilderness into which we charged with each increasingly fatigued stride. Out into a landscape of loss, where you had only things to lose and nothing to gain.

My watch beeped an hour and so I slowed my pace for the about face. At this point, I had lost most my teammates, either passing them a ways back or to earlier turn arounds. Now Will and I were alone. Turning around, the trail I had just traversed for the past 60 minutes looked entirely different. But I struck out again and this time knowing, without seeing, that I was headed for something, instead of nothing. I stopped at a creek, whose clear running water seemed out of place in the stillness and dryness of the vast expanse that surrounded it. I had ceased to sweat long ago and under the baking sun I splashed cool water over my arms and legs, shoulders and back. Cupping my hands I closed my eyes and brought the water to my flushed face. After only a few steps, the previously unnoticeable wind in the canyon became extremely apparent. The water was evaporating off my skin rapidly in the heat and now chilly wind. I grew cold. And began to wind up the mountainous hill I had climbed before. Interrupting the rhythmic sound of my breathing was a cry of PPXC! I looked up from my stony path, up the hillside to see 3 or 4 of my teammates at various levels of elevation on this hillside. Some running to my right, some running to my left, as they climbed the switchbacks. The cry had failed to echo because the desert had swallowed it, accentuating these people, these active familiar beacons against the desert backdrop. I couldn't help but mutter badass breathily on my exhale. I continued to take my mincing steps up the mountain, trying to keep the yellow t-shirt of my fellow alumnus in sight ahead of me. Cresting again, the wind returned, blowing with that overwhelming but indifferent power of things grossly larger than oneself.

I became reckless. I abandoned myself to gravity in an effort to catch my companion. His yellow shirt magically appearing and disappearing amongst the undulations of the path down the mountainside. I leapt over a renegade tumbleweed, just as reckless as me but not feeling constrained to follow the path, it flung bouncing wildly straight down the hill. Striding, sliding, turning and banking up the sides to catch wild momentum, I tore down the hill bringing that yellow shirt closer and closer. By the time I came to a slow smooth pace in the small plain below I had caught the yellow shirt and we now chatted happily, knowing our concrete jungle was not far away and with it, the pleasures of electrolyte, high protein, scientifically precise mega foods with drinks to match. Back into the reddish canyon with the gold-panner, it seemed a final antechamber, a bottleneck passageway, an airlock separating the deserts. And as we cruised out of the trail head without looking back, we were given one final thwap in the face from the humbling, crippling, wind.

Then I spent the rest of the day drinking Coronas with limes and playing beach volleyball with all my '07 friends. We played until we needed the lights. And after a game under the artificial light, we broke for dinner. Wholewheat pasta with artichoke sauce in the hot tub prepped me for the night of 40s in the steeple pit: a classic PPXC tradition. All in all, it was a good day.

But now it's Tuesday, and I've said goodbye to many of my friends. My liver is grateful, and so am I. Now I can rest, sleep a full night, or finally get back to my book. But first, I'll romp around LA a little longer. And consider myself, unbelievably, blessed.