68 degrees
74% humidity
mississippi river north/south/north/south back to 36th street parking lot
I ran again today for the first time since August 4, a little less than 2 1/2 weeks ago. The first 10 minutes were difficult, with lots of pain, even though, as the doctor prescribed, I took 3 ibuprofen 30 minutes before running. Probably the most pain that I’ve ever experienced while running, which isn’t saying that much because I tend to stop if I’m feeling a lot of pain. Then, when I’d almost hit a mile, I started feeling better. Maybe my knee and quad had warmed up or I was used to pain, not sure, but I felt like I could keep going. The doctor had told me to try one mile and if that felt good, another mile, and if that felt good, one more mile. So that’s what I did. By the end of the third mile I was tired and glad to be done but now, 2 hours later, I feel fine. Not too sore. And I can lift my straight leg, from a sitting position, off of the ground!
Some passages from Mary Oliver’s Long Life that I want to remember:
flashing like tinsel
at the center: I am shaking; I am flashing like tinsel. Restless…”(90).
seasons: falling/fall/followed/follow
summer falling into fall, to be followed by what will follow: winter again: count on it (90).
obedience to mystery
Opulent and ornate world, because at its root, and its axis, and its ocean bed, it swings through the universe quietly and certainly. It is: fun, and familiar, and healthful, and unbelievably refreshing, and lovely. And it is the theater of the spiritual; it is the multiform utterly obedient to a mystery (90).
green and blue dyes
The constancy of the physical world, under its green and blue dyes, draws me toward a better, richer self, call it elevation (there is hardly an adequate word), where I might ascend a little–where a gloss of spirit would mirror itself in worldly action. I don’t mean just mild goodness. I mean feistiness too, the fires of human energy stoked; I mean a gladness vivacious enough to disarrange the sorrows of the world into something better. I mean whatever real rejoicing can do!
brassy and wonderful
We all know how brassy and wonderful it is to come into some new understanding. Imagine what it would be like, to lounge on the high ledge of submission and pure wonder (91).
between our own best possibilities, and the view from our own window
It is one of the perils of our so-called civilized age that we do not yet acknowledge enough, or cherish enough, this connection between soul and landscape–between our own best possibilities, and the view from our own windows (91).