Today was an inauspicious debut, as the even the beautiful people, palm trees, blue (ish) waters and stunning views were not enough to give a huge boost to my cardiovascular system. Before I ran, I performed my jumping exercises at a beautiful grassy parkette overlooking the ocean.
Unfortunately, that ugly harbinger of fatigue, the random cramp that seems to emanate from the shoulder, showed up just a few minutes into my run. The 94 degree heat, even at the shore, probably didn't help much either. I am a bit embarrassed to say that I was only able to run for some fifteen minutes before I stopped, or at least slowed to an elderly crawl.
My lungs burned, my stomach felt queasy, my legs ached--you'd have thought I'd just finished a marathon as I tried to control my nausea. Despite the fact that the younger me would have thought this a beautiful shared experience with nature (see my poem below), I am definitely not going to throw up on a public beach. (I haven't thrown up for some twenty-one years, by the way, a Jerry Seinfeld-like record, but that's a story for another blog.)
This younger version of me, the blindingly and blissfully idealistic one, would have found some gray in this dark cloud of only running for fifteen minutes. "It's a start," he would say, and I will agree.
The glass may not be half full, but I feel fine saying that it's a quarter full.
"Pau'i*"--2001
Miles, hundreds of miles
all within one horizon.
Hundreds to the left,
hundreds to the right.
I take it all in,
yet take in none of it.
Gulls fly by in a perfect "V,"
("V" for victory?)
And as the waves turn chillingly white
from their seemingly permanent green...
As the blue sky stretches stupendously
to places unknown...
As the waves crash continuously, making
me feel securely safe...
As I feel the grainy sands of time between my toes...
As time indeed slows to a crawl...
I think to myself that
there is no place in this wide
world
where I'd rather
throw up.
* "Pua'i" is a Hawaiian word for vomiting
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