I am a Distance Runner

I'm a distance runner
And a normal person
Now and henceforth
Forever.
I head home in a week
And not a moment too soon.
I leave for Spain in March
And I will spend 3 months
truly simplifying my life
Drink-free
Full of movement and yoga
Beautiful meals of nutritious food
And most importantly
My beautiful, diverse,
Overwhelmingly loving
Family
Every person
Facets of a gem
Contributing to the shimmer
That I am so proud to wear.
I can say without equivocation
That I have done enough spring cleaning
Summer cleaning
Fall cleaning
And Winter cleaning
Of my life
Mentally and socially
That I can say I find it all manageable
And something I can finally maintain
I have learned so many hard lessons
But my running has shown me the most relevant:
You needn't sprint, but keep a steady pace
And pretty soon you start seeing the finish.
Back to basics
The midfoot
The moderation of my feet physiology
Moderation in all things including my running
Presently running
Responding to parts of my body asking for recognition
Feeling the threshold for pain increase
I am a distance runner
Planning long-term
Steadily reaching goals
With the minimum of possessions
But maximum focus and spirit.
I am a distance runner
And normal person
Now and henceforth
Forever.

The Lichen

A life lead with no sense of spirit
No perceived responsibility or sense of duty
Gratification at every turn, pleasing only me.
Yet knowing every answer to the Real Questions
I am my hypocrite, I am my doing as I say, not as I do.
I am equally vain and ashamed
I am confounding contradiction
After confounding contradiction
Artfully brazen, eager to leap
Socially introspective, risk averse
I am a fat man and an athlete
I am of this world and still spiritual
I am longing for love yet feel unloveable
I am a good man, and a conniving man
Depending on who you ask
I am oft taken advantage of
Yet equally a user of others for my gain
I am selectively moral,
Equally accountable to myself
And dismissive of my transgression
I should teach no one anything
Yet want to share wisdom
I am partly ever present
And never fully wandered
I am 6 hours of sleep
Deprived yet refreshed
Functional
I am not 8 hours
Nor am I 4 hours
I am broke, with no assets
Yet I own the highest quality goods
I could ever want
I am punctual
Except when I am not
I'm the one who doesn't vote
Yet rails against both candidates
I am a stickler for not accepting charity
Yet I seek it when I need something
I am talented and also very average
Deeply troubled
Yet mentally stable
I am my Mother
And most definitely my Father
Without the separation of the two
I am fortunate and guided by Grace
Yet always learn the hard way
I am every 5 out of 10 person you'd ever meet
Who feels there's an ocean of depth that makes me a 9
A life of karmic understanding
And gross abuse
I am 18
And 42
All at once
I am 2012
And 1983
Nature and nurture
In a perfectly flawed
Symbiosis.

Operation Reclamation Realization

I look back at months ago
And it's this awkward hypnosis
Set in motion from spatially sitting
In the same place as before
(Some attempts at reclamation are futile)
I get sucked inward
To that alternative universe
Of what might have been
Or occurred
And the prospect of what happened
And how it happened
And what it would have taken.
An intangible dizziness
A cross of unrealistic yearning
And realistic thankfulness
That it never really was supposed to work out.
It's like a real-life time/space portal
The rain falls
Outside the Cafe
While I plod away with pen and paper
Pumping in music through my earphones
Feeling desperate
That everything was at stake.
Hopped on caffeine
Muscles ache from the constant exertion
This isn't my favorite cafe
But it is it's most genuine self
And for that I glance past
The shitty drinks
The worst
And the lack of outlets to keep my devices full of juice
Normal people come here
Make phone calls here
Do homework here
And to them
I am writing some kind of notes for class
Or writing a grocery list
And what a list it is!
My soul gets borne
In these cafes on Third Avenue
My own soap opera
-if only it were that truly interesting!-
Playing out in my mind
And today it's a clip show
Montages of the mayhem
That ensued
I feel I'm at the end of the pilot season
And our protagonist has made
Drastic Changes
And many, many more to come.
Thank God for friends that give me things
Books, etc.
because I learned the inefficiency
Of residing in the portal
And I instead snap myself out of it
Feel the rosiness of my cheeks
The softness of my fleece
The sizzle of over-steeped tea
From a different barista than before.
Maybe we aren't meant to reclaim all the locations
Maybe they were never ours to begin with.

I wonder if the sum total
Of what I've done to others
Is to blame
For all the rapid change?
How an outward morph
Spirals inward
Into intangible?
My mind is but a product
Of my outward self
At 317: entirely self-serving
Over-compensating
Lazy
At 235:
Now concerned
In paying in karma.
Moreover
I struggle with a
Not-so-unnatural
Case of Vanity
BUT YOU ARE NOT DONE, sir.

I refuse to get sick.
No amount of hot/cold
Cold/hot transition
Will shake my resolve.
No season change
No breathing, hacking
8-year-old,
No readings of posts
About sore throats
Callings out of work
Or warm forehead sensations
Will wear down
My defenses.
I refuse to get sick
And when I move
And move all day,
It's not possible.

New Ones

I had a picture of what it would be like
If I moved back home in the spring
I'd get a job, and a downtown apartment
And we'd find a place for your things

It's eating away at me
All those moments alone
When I'm drunk and I'm hopeless and weak
It's eating away at me
I'm incomplete.

I had an idea of what it feel like
When all of my plans had been set
I'd sing you songs while you cooked me lasagna
And I'd kiss that spot on your neck

It's eating away at me
When the woman I'm with
Doesn't make me feel quite as at peace
It's eating away at me
I'm incomplete.

Well, this ain't a turning around
This ain't a lost and found
So look me in the eye and tell me why
(JS/JR)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once upon a time
We knew what our love was for
Before we melted down our hearts
And turned them into tools of war

Too much black and white together
We've turned it all to grey
So take all the blurs and shadows
From the words that I say
That I say

Lover, please stand down
There's no more fight in me now

Our voices are so cold and lonely
Somewhere down the wire
So I'm calling cross the field
Baby hold your fire
Your fire

Lover, please stand down
There's no more fight in me now
Lover, please stand down
There's no more fight in me now

Someone's got blood on their hands
Someone's got blood on their hands
And I don't understand
We don't understand

Lover, please stand down
There's no more fight in me now
(JS/AM/LF)

Beyond

Another unrecognized cause of anxiety has got me dreading something later, something other than right now.  I have bills that need to be paid, and a desire to drop close to a thousand dollars on a plane ticket and finally begin my journey on the Camino.

Once I am committed financially by a plane ticket to CDG airport I am officially beginning my pilgrimage.  It weighs so heavy and looms so large for my life and for my future.  

Why am I walking?  Well why do I walk anywhere?  What started as a pleasant way to lose weight and enjoy the outdoors of the spring and summer morphed into forced alone time, dealing with all the issues surrounding the sudden demise of my last relationship, my own self-image, and with all the lost connections to my body and my soul.  It was feeling in my own skin, feeling blisters, sore hip flexors, tired diaphragms, and at the same time feeling that imagined but still tactile sign of the cross being drawn on my forehead.  I walked because it felt good, and I had nothing better to do.  Then I walked because I wanted to, and I started to change myself.  I faced demons, I faced insecurities, I faced absolutely everything. I adopted a mantra that was "be kind to everyone, no matter what." I resisted the trappings of modern NYC life, instead opting for polite and sincerity.

My most peaceful moments were spent along the cemetery in Sunset Park, both the east and west sides.  It somehow gave me solace, and filled me up with such beauty.  These fallen people all seemed to connect me back to my soul, something that was yearning for daylight again.  As I walked, I pictured my body getting smaller, the fat falling off of me as if it were just a temporary mold.  Ten, then twenty, then thirty,then forty, then fifty, then sixty, then seventy, and now eighty pounds fell off of me.  My walks started as 3 mile stints around the neighborhood, and have culminated in a 12 mile trek to Manhattan. 

I went on my first few legit dates with women, I sang better than ever at my gigs, and was so happy with how much I was "getting after it" lately. 

And yet, I sat in a chair at 2am after having sang for 3 hours in NYC, after saying goodbye to my friend who left with a woman he would take home to sleep with, while waiting for another one of my friends to finish a drink while talking to another woman, and the rest of the bar completely cleared out, and the staff packing up.  There I sat, and my thoughts were not of finding my own fake connection for the night, or getting sauced.  I just wanted to be on the Camino.  I wanted to do something with my life.  I wanted to walk, 500 miles, through the French and Spanish countryside, not because I had anything to prove to anyone.

But rather, for the first time in a really, really long time, my SOUL wanted to be there.  And ever since I learned of the walk, the subtle sensitivity to human nuance returned to my life.  The thought of walking for the health of my soul started to move me to tears, as it does now writing about it.  It was the perfect marriage of all the aspects of me that were so out of whack, my mind, my body, and my soul, all together on one unified goal: walk to Santiago, along the Camino.

So I'm going on this pilgrimage because I need to.  And because I'm supposed to. And most, importantly, because I've sent the last eight months walking for seemingly no purpose, and like she always does, Life finally gave me a reason, no, a DESTINATION.  So henceforth, I'm walking the Camino, everyday, even though I don't leave for about 6 months.

I will spend the remaining time putting in the time to maintain and help grow healthy friendships, learning some Spanish, and saving money.  My future as it stands in Brooklyn or New York is so pleasantly up in the air, as is my music career.  I must do what feels right, instead of what is in front of me.  

My transformation continues tomorrow, with more training for the 5K race and the walk that will almost surely put me into TriBeCa in time for my early evening meeting.  I promise to pray tonight, and tomorrow, and if for nothing else than to put my head in order.  I must be accountable for things now, and I promise to be.  It's time to get a move on, to move beyond, and work to bring peace and light to others around me.  From that very source, I will find my own.

.

8 Months Into It

This is my weight loss history from January 1st to today, September 5th.

Here is a photo of me then, January:

And me last night:

I'm at 80 pounds lost. 29 pounds to go.

My first GIF

Once

You have broken me all the way down
Down upon my knees
And you have broken me all the way now
You'll be the last, you'll see

And some fight you gave
When I pushed you away
From me

And in the morning
When you turn in
I'll be far to sea

And you have broken me all the way down
You'll be the last, you'll see

And what chance have we got
When you missed every shot
For me

And in the morning
When you turn in
I'll be out of reach

And in the darkness
When you find this
I'll be far to sea

And you have broken me all the way down
You'll be the last, you'll see

Binary Code

So it's been 3 months
Since you left me
And this must be my mandatory
Expected contribution
To the myriad of songs or poems
Or utterances
About life post "You"

I made a conscious decision to remove
Any likeness
Any tangible form you once held
And honestly, the worst
By a mile
Was deleting photos -
Those digital representations
The 0s and 1s arranged so beautifully
That represented what we shared
And what we stood for.
I passed by one of you
Laying on your side
In bed
A close up on your beautiful,
Transcendent face.
It was that face I saw more often than not
In the early morning
When you rose.
It is how I will remember you by.
It was not,
(Full admission here)
Your constant reality,
But you'll go down in my life's story
As that set of eyes
And that smile.

Even that photo
Got the delete button.

Strange how I can feel so much
While looking at a screen,
Looking at 0s and 1s
Arranged so beautifully.
So, post-"you" me:
He's healthy
And getting healthier
I will not usher in my 30s,
A decade where I am supposed to fully ripen as a human,
With the reckless abandon
That I took on for 15 years previous.
I am still twinged with profound sadness
About all that lost potential
All that love that seems to evaporate in this heat.
I arrive at the same conclusion every few days,
Spurned on by a sighting of something Texas,
Or Upper West Side,
Or Los Angeles,
Or the like.
The conclusion of course,
Is that I'm not fine
And I'm not okay
I'm deeply wounded
And any outward development I make
Both physically
And with making new acquaintances
Only points towards an impending date I have
With facing the reality and truth
That I wanted to marry you
And all the necessary changes and adjustments required to so
I wanted babies
And to live that photo -
The 0s and 1s
Arranged so beautifully -
Nearly every morning.
it was surreptitiously taken from me
For reasons I know not yet how to comprehend.
I barrel towards a day of reckoning
And my hope is that I will have progressed,
Lost so much weight
Slept with enough women
Made enough new friends
Captured enough of my spirituality
That I can absorb the sucking chest wound
That was our demise.
I am comforted by the fact
That my concerns now lie in my own well-being
I mean this sincerely:
I don't care how you're doing
And what you're up to
I certainly don't wish you ill-
I don't wish you anything-
Which to me is worse.
I will soon enough have my Reckoning
Where I touch the fire of all the things you burned
And on that day,
You'll have a Conference Call
Or a Staff Lunch
Or a Happy Hour
Or a Memo to Type
It'll be a Tuesday or something -
And I will be Alive
I will experience real and true pain
And I will spit on the scorched earth
As you become an also-ran in my story
Relegated to a singular memory
Of beautiful 0s and 1s
Arranged on a screen
That grows ever foggy.

For those Walking Purposefully

For those Walking Purposefully

Your pounding aching legs know well

What these kindred spirits mean

When they say so fervently

NEVER
STOP

MOVING

My Prayer

Let my outside Match my inside
Let my Inside become More Resolute
Let my spirit return to my Tangible Self
Let them unite into a more empowered Living

#4

A Profound Sadness
Comes over me
When I think of
Never being draped
In your Yellow Curls again
How you kissed me
As if it were a gulp
A great swallowing
Of my essense
And your saliva
Covered my Lips
Cheeks
Chin
Everywhere
The way an Infant
Eating ice cream
Cares not where it goes
And my hand
In back of your head
My lungs Breathing
Gulping
Your essence
And two pairs
Of Very Different Eyes
Meet in a Passing Glance
as we undress.

Socrates

I am bound;

Because I believe so strongly

That all we really possess

Is the present tense

And all the principles - 

Each noble truth

That We discover in this Condition -

I am bound, therefore,

Despite every thinking Man's word

Every spiritual Man's feeling

Despite every apathetic Man's indifference;

Lo! I am bound

With such Profound conviction

To drink this Hemlock!

I love you forever

Fully

And without condition

And I am bound by that

Even if you tell me to stand down

My love is never angry

Never ashamed

And it is as real as the Present Tense

So I am bound

Irrevocably so

To drink

To die

To feel

To know

That my love was impervious

To any of my former trappings

That my love was perfected

By its own death

By the bitter taste

The room temperature cold

The runny, floral accents

Of the Hemlock.

My Loss, the Bengal Tiger

My Loss
Is a Bengal Tiger
Raging
Biting
Clawing
Attention-occupying
And only after weeks
Of the biting
I realize
The true nature
Of unconditional love:
That the animal bites
Are a direct and mutilating
cause and effect
Of me holding his chain.
I must release him
Let him escape
Forgive
And never stop loving.

Real Freedom

Real freedom:
Realizing 
In the event of cataclysm
Or natural disaster
I would be content
To step off this train
This delayed
Noisy train
And with my bag
Shorts
And comfy shoes
Walk the earth
Persisting 
To be constantly present.

Wake up each and every day
And before you leave your home
Tell yourself in no uncertain terms
Be good and nice
To everyone today
No
Matter
What.
Be patient especially.

Now go do greatness.

As the love they shared for each other
began to flood in,
at that very moment
the soldiers stood down
to let the lovers embrace,
And a contrite and airy spring rain
began to fall
and embrace his bare skin.
The skies then parted
as the lovers did,
and the baptism of sorts was complete.

I'll never forget
Where I was
And what I was wearing
Doing
Seeing
Smelling
The Day
All my lyrics became
So surreptitiously
True.