ultrawriting and the swing-arm scorpion

Life is good getting better, all the running when mixed with yoga is another return to the moving current, out from the eddies where modern life traps us. I am also more involved than usual with a man who cares about me. The summer has gone quickly and quietly, a couple of heat waves and otherwise plain old lovely northern california sunshine. Yesterday morning I ran a half-marathon on my own along the river, for the first time ever and it felt great. I especially noticed falling into a sweet rhythm of breath and motion. I am hoping to use endurance running towards developing a discipline for endurance writing. There, the cat is out of the bag! I'm gonna start an ultrawriter craze. Writing entire novels at one sitting while choking down powerades and peanut butter! Think I won't? Watch me.

on a heli-tour

Last night I had a dream I was at work with a clipboard with a checklist of items had to be done on the shift. I was working with perfect strangers and asked them for help but they didn't want to help me. Turns out some woman with a big mouth who looked like a swing-arm lamp scorpion was in the hallway talking shit about me and some perceived hurt I caused her. I immediately confronted the scorpion and she blabbered this nonsense to my face and I didn't even have to look closely at her to know she was lying. After all, I have never before met a swing-arm lamp anyone! I told her to shut the hell up and she started inching up my leg, and I woke up terrified. If that doesn't get you out of bed, nothing will. I scrambled out and into the kitchen for some coffee, and worked up this joke:

What do you do when someone's telling lies on you?
Hang them by their toenails and feed them the truth!

you could be compromised

I knew I could be compromised and I am, I am compromised, I would be a fool to think otherwise. My system. My physiology. My psychology. Compromised all the time. I do not mean the kind of arrangement like when I allow my neighbor's pomegranate tree to grow into my yard in return for being allowed to harvest the pomegranates. This is a choice. I am talking about events beyond our control. Solar flares from the sun creating electromagnetic chaos in our atmosphere. Medications which we must take for our medical conditions, which may compromise our systems which have to process them. Our livers have been crossed one too many times, perhaps our kidneys are overtaxed. We are compromised. I cannot just stop breathing the air, yet this morning when I step outside my apartment I can smell and taste the woodsmoke from one of two fires burning multiple thousands of acres just north of where I live. There are thousands of people north of here whose homes and very lives may be altered. We may all be forced into migratory patterns. Compromised. This is why I care.  Because what happens right here, or way over there in a faraway land, may be comparable, systemically, to a solar flare. We all feel it somehow. Maybe not now, maybe later. Do not ever think yourself too exceptional to be compromised, you could be compromised. If you look closely, you may realize - you already are.