running

the weather broke @ a record fifteen miles -iii

The sunlight was cheering me up and the kind exchanges I had with passerbys along the way. I was softening at a point in the run where I figured I woulda been going into ‘warrior’ mode. I passed a woman who looked awfully sad and wished I coulda cheered her up. A young man cruised past me on the uphill, doing sprints. There was a lady getting coached on the Guy West bridge, and I thought about my boyfriend who was gonna follow me on his bike today but had to cancel. I think it’s just as well – I like to run alone.

I always see many homeless encampments and the homeless folks either are keeping to themselves or, in my experience, are just as kind as anyone if you give them a shout and a smile. There are pits and labs off leash sometimes by the river, but I found so long as I don’t scare easy and just keep running toward them, everything will be okay. Only once (last week) did I change course because a dog was running toward me bellowing. He turned out to be more bark than bite.

The last four miles would prove to be the hardest, tracing the river west on the levee, but by this time I was just a slow train to sacramento and I was able to remove myself from the effort so that I honestly felt my body was its own charge and recharging system (paired with a couple more packs of gummies i stashed in my flipbelt), so all I had to do was envision finishing and get out of the way.

The idea of feeling pain crossed my mind but never really caught hold! Again, training in the heat had acclimated me to a higher threshold of pain. It gets so heavy some days when I finish these levee runs close to noon, I find myself dipping off the trail around sutter’s landing (2 miles from home) and splashing the cool clean waters over me to cool off. Today I still had cool breezes coming over me, which made all the difference in the world.

I made it home in 2 hours 45 minutes – exactly 11 minute miles x15 miles = 165 minutes. I made it! My boyfriend is really nice and he took me out for a large Peach Perfection at Jamba Juice to celebrate the victory.

running

the weather broke @ a record fifteen miles -ii

The first mile to the american river had me feeling strong and not as tight as previous days, I sure was psychologically prepared, and as I summited the levee to the railway the 7am amtrak leaving downtown sacramento chugged east, blocking my path. I fell into the rhythm of the train and got a good visualization for myself as I stood there waiting and running in place. Be like a train, be like a train. Several miles later it occured to me that birds are like mantra bodies because they often sing the same song over and over all their lives! This reminded me how useful my own mantras have become, and reassured me it’s not a needless to practice these repetitions: nam-myoho-renge-kyo. I had been singing it in the shower before sunrise.

Once I snuggled up next to the river, I picked up my pace a bit to the cool delta breeze carrying across the levee. The visor of my hat kept the red rising sun out of my eyes, as I ran due east for another mile before following the river bend south at paradise beach. It must have been 60F and I am acclimated to running later in the day, towards 75F, so my weekday training gave me an edge for the early morning long runs.

There is a boat launch with a water fountain at mile six, so I was able to stop and hydrate for a minute and take a pack of energy gums with electrolytes there. Quickly I got back on the trail, and I was feeling fantastic. My breathing has gotten easier and easier the more I run, which is what happens to long distance runners. Your body is amazing and learns to make the most of the oxygen. I always hit my inhaler before any run, because otherwise my asthma makes me wheeze, but two blasts is all I ever need before any run no matter the distance.

I discovered that mile 7 is about where I begin to loosen up and hit my stride. The trail took me under a couple of highways and now the sun had climbed and lotsa people were out walking their dogs and cycling and running, too. Some of the early morning fishermen had packed in their river waders and were heading home, climbing the levee right before my eyes. The american river is full of salmon and snowmelt off the Sierras. I did my U-turn and headed back on a slight incline then stopped again at the same water fountain at mile 9, as it was the only water I would get on my run…

running

the weather broke @ a record fifteen miles -i

Before you let yourself start believing change cannot be kind, remember how summer breaks into fall and the most welcome change of all. I confess I hit the café for the pumpkin latté this morning to celebrate. The sweetness of the drink did of course mask her flavour, so I did what any good lover of coffee might well do and went home to top her off with a fresh pot. Since then I have been shining commensurate with the rising sun. Reading all the headlines may we not be pinioned by tragedy, no, may we only resonate with the triumphs in the world. Wanna try?

Yesterday I ran a new personal best in distance, down the river and back, more than 15 miles. I run a slow pace, slow and steady and I don’t care, eleven minute miles. The idea is to run and enjoy running long distances (my mom is funny, she’s calling me forrest gump). I tallied 41 miles across a five day stretch last week: 6-9-6-5-15. Each day more painful than the next, but I prayed to god saturday night I would wake up feeling ready and able to do the morning long run… and sure enough when I got up @ 3am sunday i felt okay and took it slow, ate a bowl of noodles and drank a thermos of black london tea no.1, did some light stretching to the gems of piano sonatas strung out by the gentleman on public radio, wrote a little, read a Russian fairytale, laced up my gray wolf Nike Pegasus runners, took a B complex vitamin and a caffeine pill, drank some organic juices and water, buttered my skin with Banana Boat, charted my course on g.maps, shook it out and hit the trail at marathon standard time, 7am…

journal entry

Journal # 09.02.2016

Tomorrow I will be driving with a friend 2 hours north past Lake Tahoe to Reno so we can hike Mount Rose. This mountain has the highest base in the Tahoe range, somewhere around 8,000 feet. The peak is 10,000. No big deal, just a fun trip and a way for me to cross train. Honestly my body feels like hell still from last week’s 41 total miles running so I am happy to take another day off this week. I have felt progressively worse since the 13:7mile B2B. That was my first ever half marathon, so maybe it was an overexertion? It’s all a big experiment. My nutrition and sleep needs are also part of the equation. I have been drinking a lot of water and V8 juices and eating PB&J on whole wheat and oatmeal, and salmon. But I lapsed for a few days into sourdough bread with cheese and tomato, and even had a 5-egg cheese omelet yesterday for lunch with sausage. I convinced myself that I oughta clear out the remnants of my old diet from the fridge – by eating! Bad idea. I am expecting to lose 15-20 pounds by december for the CIM, so I can be at ideal race weight (I have lost about 5 this past month). I can tell my legs are much stronger, and my lungs are doing more with the oxygen because I am rarely out of breath anymore. I’ve been keeping up with yoga and running in sun and heat lately, because I cannot get off work until 830am (would prefer to hit the road around 700am). The good news is that I have been feeling fantastic when I am on the road or river trail and running. I think if I continue to stretch well, tweak the nutrition and cross train when my body tells me I should, pushing the limits on the long runs, I should be just fine and ahead of the Hal Higden schedule I am following. I kinda wish I had chosen a trail run like the AR25 instead of the road marathon for my rookie race, cause I’m finding that the trail is so much softer on the body. Wait! I did sign up for the AR Parkway inaugural 20 miler in November. Though it’s registered as a road race, I can only hope it will be hybrid, if they leave room for running on the margins of the bike trail, where there is indeed earth.

on washing a cat

When i picked up my cat ‘Mouse’ and took him to the tub with the bucket for washing, the whole organism fought me from the musco-skeletal channel, buttressing into an indefensible arch. It started in the mind of the cat, triggered the moment we crossed the divide of hallway and washroom, and before any water even touched the body. Dogs at this point begin to paddle their wrists instinctively.

The cats are no stranger to my washing them, and always appear more content afterwards, when dry and clean, and sleep soundly without the pests. And yet the fight comes up again every time we go to wash.

See how we fight both the good and the bad? Someone wants to help us, they offer a way out of our problems, and our whole organism reacts against the change, almost as though we believe they would hurt us.  Takes a funny resolve sometimes to do that which will be good for the health.

depression

My skin so thin and traveling has been hard to endure no matter how local it could be the neighbor and dare i dial your number and be confronted by you and me.

My mind unreal looks for finality in rituals which have no end. Shopping the last pear half or double dozen of egg. Wishing i may never bleach the bathroom again.

All work to go away with every single necessary interaction. The ceasing of small pleasures even, only to take more sleep.

Only to dream nightmares more real than conscious reverie and only to wanna end to those, too, and only to wake to more dishes and emotions to contend…

and the very great pressure of you waiting for me to prove myself real.

add infinitum (part 2 of particulate)

Why all this secrecy in the only land left with the only trees that offer only the finest santa rosa plums one could sink one’s soul into? The soul always begins at the enamel of the teeth, some part of myself said. I vetoed the thought. Back to the question, why did we have to hide our treasures? When sharing them was so much more enjoyable? What parcel of  drone intelligence in Afghanistan informed us to continue to hold on?  I mean, dare i point to the ground and meet eyes with my people to show how half of what we cherish and hold close to vest goes unused and rots between our toes?

Tonight is the same as a week ago. Forensics agents and yahoo messenger chat administrators  get drunk on insomnia. Graveyard hours give leniency to those who wish to have the fresh air and night sky and electric stars to guide and calm them. I set my feet to urban time. I see the junkies and locals steady mobbing the Whole paycheck parking lot trash bins.

Although I admired cold cases gone hot, I felt as though Forensics were passe. Standard procedure. The topic was of less interest to me in the new century, almost mindless. Many experientials and intuitives like myself were focused on precognition. Developing the sense. We hoped to locate ourselves either half steps ahead or behind law enforcement rhythms. Not because what we did was illegal. north beach beat adulators, and other sordid types.  Where we all were headed was all but certain (what some would call) hell.

by katya

I was still asking was there something going on?  halfway into the week. The lawyers and forensics had fucked up the whole scenario. Nobody knew what time it was. Nobody had any money left. And everyone was angry about the lies and deception. But nobody had enough time or energy to pull us out of the mudpuddle.

And I may have been ahead of the awareness curve, bulging back down, booty slump the chart produced toward some social science survey of  U.S. census citizenry, projected out of powerpoint to document awareness. As measured by hard to prove, easy to dismiss qualities or behaviors based on industry standards… as they cautiously evolved through the academic bureacracies to gain acceptance by industry leaders backed by and instrumental in securing ongoing public and private funding through grants and foundations, etc. You will be so fucked up trying to understand this bullshit! they promised.  Only for a while, they promised. Until you sign some contract they created. To fuck you. And whomever you’re fucking, too.

But we could blame the lawyers and the cops only so long, before we realized the deeper root of the problem.

This left us where we were. Flat-footed. Money made everything what it was, or worse.  Money kept the institutions together, barely.  Any revolutionary creative force threatened to gain immediate foothold.  Generally speaking.  An exceptional frontload washer of a maelstrom was imminent. The animals knew it. Killer whales rose almost whole out the Alaskan waters, undeterred by the opposing gravity. The sea otters turned and turned and turned, cracking shells together in cacophonous productions. Seas and territories globally touched and met and kept the electric circuit of our world whole, connected, glowing. Undisruptable. Unrepudiated welterweight champion of our solar system.

Throw your hands in the air, celebrate if you can breathe on another woodburn winter day in our increasingly spare the air day oxygen deficit-run you ragged kinda culture. Fuck! If you have asthma like many of us do, myself included, you might be getting worried. Secondary to secondhand smoke and chronic bronchitis, then fuck you feel the air or what is lacking in the air quality. You find yourself out of breath consistently and might sign up for alerts for spare the air days on your cell, because strangely your increasingly inhibited, shallow breathing coincides perfectly with poor index days in your local area. Fuck! This is not good.

Each breath like each meal, every morning a bit less nutritious than the last, it seems. So? Make up for it with the HFCS, it always fills the gap. The closer! High Fructose Corn Syrup for all! Like we went from the local deli of the eighties, to subway, all the You begin to worry. You don’t want to suffocate, eh? Is it a possibility? Well, can you get up and out of bed if you don’t have to?

I wondered about this from the moment i awoke into this fine cold for oakland with hard nipples for a winter storm-tested window. Frozen now thawing. For natives to this region the pain of the cold. Knawing. And my heart was hard beating for the memory. Oh, and the gaps between what i could recall. They would bubble and settle, like memory foam. the air slowly gone out of them. Back to my mug root beer. My sweet time home alone to myself, slightly on the beneficiary side. The asset of the balance was restoration of mental health.

k in red

I would have my converses. my all-stars on. black and white and just that simple. arguments may have gotten loud last night. but not complicated. simple like an air horn blast in your ear. well. through a hollow wall or door. this is low rent living. you know the deal. we cannot be sore. everything is built toward an early death of hard apartment life chewed up kinda living. Used to the give and take of taking. Oh, less the natural giving. Natural like breathing, of course. If you did not give, then never would you receive. Otherwise how would you know? how to cut it hard and cut it slow? Cut it deep so the shallows seem to be of commensurate kind of depth?

Had no one known a difference in depths? Well… you know the rest. So of course I was wise to the tales the oral traditions of dangerous acts and certain prohibitions… i was aware inside of me lay certain inhibitions (most of which i secretly hoped i could overcome). A childlike kind of desire came over me almost every morning as I awoke. So second nature I had to really slow down time – to a bowling ball release… (from a fastball down the middle with no sidespin). Plain and unaccessorized and hot out the oven.

Today was gonna be small as partly sunny. Large as organized unionized, pasteurized, homogenized labor. Like Oakland works and even on today, this k-day, this okay day. This say, what kind of day? hey! oh, right, taking a left turn on Broadway today. Say. Do. Bum a smoke. Listen to your heart. Faster then slower as you disappoint yourself. Then heat it up as you wax philosophical. Suffocating kinda fast on the spare the air day.

Feeling nautical. Enclosed. Embraced not so much. Traced now with the GPS on your android, checked off for awhile. Out of boredom. Change of style. Hiphop back to nothing back to hiphop. Play with the TV. Let her on then turn her off again. Silence the commercials and thank god you gotta remote. From the talk shows to retro tv; old episodes of that terrible show: murder, she wrote.

No remote access to your laptop. atop the tabletop. Time foams up like the air, the spaces in the air, the humidity after the ice thaw. The moisture in the place. The mould, if black, must be the worst kind in America. Basis: race. So you turn your thumbs around one another. Chasing flesh into butter. Not no margarine. Uncut portions may now be cut, in time like the cuts on your pen you made with whatever was sharp enough to make cuts. You forgot because you were in the blocks of natural inhibition amplified. We call these the ruts.

But today the sun will rise and fall and your chest will do the same. Your head will think the whole business slightly curious, all the way to half-baked aka insane. But no the sanity reminds you in the background. The foreground prone to quaking earth. The drip of clock arms shakes off the gravity and they will rise back until they peak above your head, where breathing is so easy.

Tommorrow at the mercy of the subconscious again.

Today I became conscious of the conscious objectors. And all foul political propositions which held court in the states for too long. For years.  Too long at the mercy of those who wish to burn wood inside their fireplaces. For fun. Not necessarily thinking they might be impacting anyone. Smoking cigars and tending to their hearths. Coughing up a lung, and further and farther from the earth.

Close to going underground, yet high from the contact with spirits never before seen (or seen only in dreams)…  Slow motion books, quickly and carelessly bound. The economic gradient in decline… (declination is a relatively healthy sign). Against the steep trajectory of the euro taking off. Take off your shoes and donate them to the Greeks. Let the dutch stop up the gaps and all the leaks.

Just like you, I’ve been waiting for this day.

And no, not just since last night.

When I lay down.

 The aforementioned statement is unsponsored, unclaimed, unadopted, and otherwise left hanging to expose and disintegrate into atmospheric conditions, and under no condition to be repeated, remembered, sued, reflected upon, or automatized unless a request is sent with alot of money to the author@ loveshelives@live.com.

year of diminishing returns # i

She was what she was

the year of diminishing

returns

In the year of diminishing returns,

administered (was)…

(to humor your ass)

(my ass)

(our collective behinds)

(our bubble goose cabooses)

our pony-up (when they demanded the triple crown stallion)

Nothing left up to anyone (no one)

(that means all of us, diluted with equal parts tap water)

(not even those who got degreed in creative license…

(those lucky scrapers off the bottom barnacles)

Certain

heartache (certain)

heartburn (also certain, it seems)

untold darkness (certain and unexpected)

over non-extant (certainly does not exist)

sky unfold (whats sky? ) (no one knows)

unfurled (untold untoward unsightly wrinkly unkempt)

dilapidated far to one side extremities (a factual account)

Fallen like (mighty) trees felled

told (telled) lies (to keep the truth a mighty distant memory)

(to keep investment in trust at an exact. ie.  precise, all time minimum)

(sounds great like bargain basement prices) (but isn’t great)

to fuck off! (told but only in ways unspoken)

(like a text sms)

(or a brief email)

or a blocked call (every time you call its straight to voicemail, friend)

or a slimy rock uncovering

secondhand news set on fire

and (thrown through your bayless window)

(if youre lucky 2 have a goddamn window)

or parentheses that have taken over

their own use (of) themselves))) ((it so)) (appears)

now you got air to put into it

(your window)

(a terrible joke).

Ah, yes!

a single year (thankless eternity seeming)

that means 365 m.fucker days (!)

of bending over and taking it (see, nothing 4 the imagination really) (just the edge of the mattress)

no matter what class (clown).

grade (grub).

haughty felt sense (ego-toad).

We all have our declassified (ie raped)

b. grade  (non-virgin)

hid just under our (potential in most cases) A-grade

(subconscious- relegated)

sub-lemonade (like submarine. aka. damn torpedoes. sunk from our conscious knowing)

deeply entrenched(they call it good 4 survival)

in any shelf (aka earthen crust, water soluble)

of any material

(even the rooted consistency of mamas marmalade)

(laid in the area forbade)

(below the patch of shade whereby sets down roots

(citric) acid touch of jade (still grabs hold like marmalade)

(ma now under scrutiny (turning orange) swears she ain’t made)

in us (this egg no one claims to have laid)

fancy prohibition era grade

(and if you think u dont)

(u will find yours)

boot

legged (h.sweet h. labelled) swill.

Still!

You will get yours! (just knock the secret knock)

my dear (ally of the underground rail snail)

im sorry (you can’t go begging for rotgut, afterall it seems)

k @ h.sweet h.

what is home

We are all so (lonesome)

in this year

of dim

inish (ing)

repo (ssessed)

relo(cated)

re(defined)

re(designed)

re(upped)

re(discovered)

re(done)

re(setting) of re(sun)

re(inforced) stereotypes (labels)

re(experienced trauma (ptsd)

re(d) eyes burning with fires of re(cent) happenstances elongated

like m(urder) in our m(inds)…

Im sorry (or may say so, just to say in a way that suggests the contrary)

let me start again.

Pity we are all so (lonesome)

in this year

of dim (not bright)

in (certainly in is out)

ish (oh how i wish) (u wish) (wishing-well-wished)

go phish(ed)

re(done)

re(setting) of re(sun)

re(inforced) stereotypes (labels)

re(experienced trauma (ptsd)

Re(d) eyes burning with fires of

re(cent) happenstances

re(legated) far back

back

like m(urder)

in our (crossing our) (always crossing our)

m(inds) if not B-fore

then  be(lated) like

e(longated) like another

shadow (carrying over our form)

stretching and pinning us

(like some application to your desktop)

(like some eyes behind the blue heron)

(like some nametag to some name)

(like some car accident to some pavement)

like some beyond the grave

abase(ment)

to conclude

the publicity scandal

surrounding you

at your

arraign(ment)…

all your possessions

like storage lockers unpaid (for 90 days)

up for grabs

consign(ment)

all what came

and

(went)

the year(ya, this one here)

our collective

aching souls

declared (or were declared)

bankrupt (c.)

Pretta, a girl with a weak heart

Pretta had a weak heart and everyone who knew her, knew. They may not have wanted her to know they knew, but she knew just the same. They may not have been old enough to understand what was said to still know. Still they knew. And she knew they knew, whether by speaking or gesturing or glancing away or rolling the eyes or tongues back or around in a circle or simply sucking on a thumb. She could relate to sucking. Her exposure sucked.

She learned to carry herself with grace. Before she even cared to, wanted to, needed to and so did. Her mother taught her with books on crown chakra balanced. Her neck became strong. Long.

She was seven years old, Pretta. Seven when she was able to walk through a small group of girls (not friends she knew but friends to them was she to be.  and do.)  also seven or so, most of whom she had to suffer in pre school times. Seven years old.  She held her head and her dresses high, and left them all with only a breeze trailing her strong jawline she inherited from her father. She would use unsparingly from this moment on.

She would be so generous. She would not spare them her pride. Inherited. She would not spare them it! For her weakness required compensation. Overcompensation to balance. A simple concept she knew, from the books on her crown chakra to ballet she watched the older girls and prayed to some day do, too. Having descended from a murmur descended from a fever: aka Scarlet. Red hood got her namesake by course of coursing blood and blue, turned out to air. Met oxygen with a blush. Stirred the beating heart some.

                 Scarlet. Scarlet sometimes coursing so as to make the tissue flush. Often a cure could come, some said, if you sat bedside and waited out the wailing winds. If you did not rush. Rouge red against the pale blues tripping out in an arc the moist flower bed.  Makes you scream, terrified. Strikes the weak of constitution dead. Or so was said.  No one wanted scarlet fever. That was how effective she knew exhibition of this trait to be. The small group of kids became smaller below her above average height, as she passed through unfazed. No less than two of the girls left the experience,  eyes glazed.

Pretta… she was going to make it. They also knew this, those who poked her and would not let her touch them back for fear of contagion.  She would outlive them all! You did not dare suggest otherwise. Everyone in this majority w.a.s.p country understood. The weak. The earth. The meek. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ya Ya Ya… Her odds had low denominators, La La Ya!  She learned her math by it, her perfect true condition. The one thing that made her stand out  unique. Like the way she felt the day she rode her banana seat bike first through the mission. Approaching # one wholesomeness, they wanted her to think. Organic and good for the spirit.  Now tilt back, nurse said, and drink.

Young Pretta sprouted tall.  To help her get above it. A tall girl, many remarked, a lady still a girl. She would never know why they stopped. Why they stared. What they said. If they cared.  Sometimes she really minded. Most of the times she let them see the back of her head, her long dark straight hair.

Her peers they could not relate to her on many levels. She seemed older sometimes, but not all of the time. She got tougher every year, for sure. But all knew somehow the fears she carried, though some did not know they knew. Their was no lesson in her. She was not a subject to be taught. Still most and especially the boys thirsted to learn from her or learn her or learn to be like her, the girls.

She would not give anything to be any of them. Not one. Though she looked up to quite a few. Even looked up to younger girls she knew. She did not know why she was strong, or why everyone thought her so. But she let her hair grow long like a girl. And she arm wrestled until she was strong like a boy.  And the only thing she must pretend and put on, was that she was somehow tough, boy-tough.

She could and did pretend. She did not have to like it. She did not have to even be it, no. Not a fake. Atleast not pretend to the end. Where the boy would spit, she would hesitate. Then stop. Where the boys would curse, she would not. Where a boy would scream and yell and go manic? She would perform clear and conscious restraint. On a dime. Skirts falling ahead of her young calves and back again. Swing, swung. Swing, swung.

The boys eyes went wide like saucers, then telescoped small when she moved again.

They could not understand how she moved like that? could not predict when? She was a sweet sweet anomaly,  in the class of twenty twenty-two. A shame she would not graduate, Pretta, at least not through and through. She had to do things differently, or wanted to, they say.

She had a weak heart, Pretta. Everyone who knew her, knew.

09.01.11

The truth is confusing, the confusion is disturbing, and reality does not give a damn. My heart holds vacancy for the life of them. and you. Still to attend to the sky in its entirety.                          Sea. The depths grow green to Royal blue. Where all lies over exposeD in a happy residue. Off center in allostasis. From the residual, extract the amplification. Subtract from that all that you already know or believe.  The tattooed kneecap. the hair weave. The eyes tell of suffering behind capri ankles. The wrist-roll up to three quarters a sleeve.                The honesty cannot be found from infusion thereafter. She was left to floats on water boiling. Like a poached egg. Then arises Thick, like crisis in love. Then arises as vapor- Clear

having it up to here and back down

to the rafters