The Placement of Things

I have been putting this blog together, taking it apart, restructuring it and re-working it again and again over the past few days. Granted, the landscape might have helped with this: I spent Sunday night and most of Monday honoring American Presidents by sleeping, walking, bathing, hiking, photographing and all sorts of other verb-ing in the Desatoya Range in Eastern(ish) Nevada. It's a beautiful place, but if you are into things like trees and lush greenery, I think you might be in shock, feeling naked maybe, the first time you go. But there is something about an empty landscape, though, that opens up and that (for me, at least) allows my thoughts to breathe.

The large spaces invite the intrusion of thought.

And my thoughts, such as they are, are many. 

I don't know if I have written about this much (or as much as I'd usually do) but I've finally done it: I signed up for a full Ironman race. I'll be doing Coeur d'Alene this year-- a venue I'm excited about, actually-- and my goal, this time, is simply to have fun and to finish. But being who I am, I want to do well, too, and I think that's where this blog post actually begins. Because for me "having fun" translates into "doing well" and "doing well" means actually placing and once you place, it might as well be first, right? And what good is winning your age group compared to actually all-out-winning and so goes my slippery slope until it's Wednesday of last week and I strain my Achilles on a silly mobility run during my lunch break.

No biggie, right?

Well, then I come back to a meeting that I am supposed to head and no one has read the document I created and no one knows what to say and I know that my boss thinks that I have failed-- and that is when the sharp pangs begin. Pain in my back and ribs so horrible I can't even begin to describe it. I can only say that it was not possible to sit up straight in my chair in the conference room any longer and it was all I could do to breathe.

My co-workers threatened to take me to the nearest Urgent Care so much that I ended up taking myself.  

The nurse was had a blonde-chin length bob with her hair held back from her face with a gigantic red and white polka dot bow. But she nearly made me cry with her questions.

If I was happy. 

If I have to train so much. 

If I have anyone to talk to. 

"Your eyes are so sad," she said.

Who knew mini lilly pads grow in the Desatoya Range beneath Aspen Trees?

And I do what I usually do in that situation: I mumble something polite and offer a half smile as if to say oh gosh, silly me. It's just my Achilles again. 

But I knew-- and know-- it wasn't and isn't. 

Which brings me to Sunday, the night of the Literary Arts & Wine reading-- the reading series I started after I was newly single and terrified of not-writing any more. It wasn't the best-thought-out plan I'd ever had, but somehow I thought if I had least had to show up somewhere once a month having written something, life would somehow continue and I wouldn't simply curl into a round, dead thing in the center of my living room floor.

I read a piece I have been working on for a long time. 

I wrote the first draft back in 2010 but took it up again this winter when I realized the things I was saying about the nature of time and the placement of emotions and meaning in our lives shift as we age. Of course, I used my running as an example of this-- how there was a time in my life that running meant more than any other thing and sometimes when I go for a run, that old feeling creeps back up and I get excited about the sport again. But no matter how often I feel that tug, there is the ever-present realization that I am not a teenager anymore, than I am not a runner in any sense of the word, that my life has moved beyond that time, in part, because I was able to live it when I did.

Aspen trees-- bare of leaves-- imagery I used to mark the passage of time in the essay I read that was a really big flop.

It's not a very complicated thought, granted-- it was a piece about getting older, I guess-- but I had hoped for more out of myself.  A better reading, a clearer articulation of my words, a better outfit that didn't make me look like I weigh 500 pounds and, honestly, as I read to a room of strangers, I really just wished that there was another writer there to connect with, who could appreciate my work and look beyond the fact that it's just "sports crap."

But then again, maybe "sports crap" is all I write and all I have written for years. 

So, out there in Eastern Nevada as my eyes found new landscapes, new mountains, new aspen groves and new qualities of light, I began to wonder if it isn't time to put my athletics in a different place than at the center of my life. Even in my life as a writer.

I still want to find a way to write about endurance events and I hope for my own sake, one day, I do. For now, though, I think it's best that I take a hiatus from the attempt so I'll be away from this blog for a while.

Thank you for reading, if you have. Your attention and time means more to me than I can possibly express.

Maybe I'll be back?

I have a feeling I will be when I discover the proper placement of things.

The world viewed from a busted-up-wreck-of-a-building. The light is all wrong, but the idea behind it is why I post this picture. Maybe, when it's time, the image in the window will be in focus.