A Conglomeration of Magnanimous Proportions

Posted on 23 January 2009 | Leave a comment

Today I had two more beers on the quest o’ beers. I had Hoppin’ Frog‘s Gulden Fraug Belgian Ale. Gulden Fraug wasn’t nearly as Belgian as Gulden Draak, but it was still tasty. And had a lot of alcohol. I wouldn’t mind trying their porter, but I don’t think the Heorot has it. In fact, they have been out of several of their good porters the past few times I have been there.

I also had a wheat ale, whose name I can’t spell. It was soft and sweet, like a new lover. Unsullied. Crisp. I was surprised because I usually abhor wheat beers. Every day is a new day.

The quality time spent with the Nathans and Stephanie was well worth not remembering the name of one of my new loves.

*

Last night I went to watch my brother coach. He continually amazes me with his compassion and sweet spirit. Where I am all abrasive and in your face, he is laid back and kind. I guess we compliment each other like that.

There were no diving catastrophes despite the few reverses that were attempted. They were all completed with room to spare. There were no Greg Louganis moments.

I stayed to watch the entire meet, and I remembered why I loved swimming in high school. I love that coaches and spectators alike yell at the meets. When you are under water, you can’t hear. Try it. I wish I could replicate the sound here. But I can’t.

Maybe try turning the stereo way up. Put your fingers in your ears, then take them out. Then put them in; then take them out. Do this over and over again for a minute and a half or so, and you will know what it sounds like to swim the hundred-yard butterfly or breaststroke.

Now leave the stereo on. Go into another room and cup your hands tightly around your ears. Wiggle your fingers around and listen to your skin rub against itself while still trying to listen to the music. This is swimming freestyle. You cannot hear the words. You only know that someone, somewhere is yelling for you.

And backstroke? You might as well buy some industrial strength ear plugs. Back strokers can only hear their own most secret inner thoughts.

Each time someone went off the block, I could feel my adrenaline rise. I wanted to be competing. I think the reason I was so well adjusted in high school was my focus on athletic competition. I wasn’t so interested in academic prowess, though I got the job done, because I was interested in pushing my body to its physical limits.

I need that again. I need to feel my body pushing through the slick water, propelling along by the power of my hands and feet. I want to be a human submarine, diving and cutting and slipping past the enemy.

In truth I am slow. This is me swimming:pig_swimming

I do not cut. I do not dive. I do not slip past the enemy.

I sort of bob along with my arms moving and my legs kicking. But it’s therapeutic and athletic. And not really so much like a pig in water.

*

Today I jogged/walked four miles. It took about an hour.

See? I am SLOW. But I did it. I finished. And that is where I am. On finishing.

I would like to finish anything: the mini-marathon, coursework, reading the Bible all the way through. Really, some sense of completion would be healthy.

I’d like to be done.

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Posted in Beer, Fat, Relationships, Running, Swimming

Diving. Scheduling. And Ginsberg.

Posted on 22 January 2009 | 1 comment

Tonight I am going to watch high school diving. My brother coaches. I love diving and I hate it. The beauty of it intrigues me. The danger of it undoes me. And, I despise those few second between the leap and the landing: reverses are the worst.

Even Greg Louganis, the world’s best diver at the time, cracked his head doing a reverse. Of course, he went on to win both the spring board and the platform competition that year. The dive that actually won the platform competition for him was a reverse dive. Irony.

I think I have an aversion to reverse dives because I saw someone land on the board trying to complete one. She didn’t get hurt, but I was afraid in that split-second that she would break her neck. Possibly I was afraid she would fall from the board into the pool and drown, surrounded by life guards too stunned to move.

*

Last semester, I didn’t have room to breathe. This semester, I can’t seem to get on a schedule. I read next week’s assignment this week, and didn’t remember to do this week’s assignment. Having too much time is sometimes worse than not having enough.

*

Finally, I will leave you with this, some of my favorite Ginsberg from Howl:

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and some eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, …

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Posted in Just for Fun, Queer, Relationships, Swimming

Conflict. Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale.

Posted on 21 January 2009 | 3 comments

I am horrible at conflict. Period.

Since I am doing this 100 beers in 6 months thing at the local bar, the Heorot, I have to try some beers I wouldn’t normally try. Today I am trying Sierra Nevada’s Anniversary Ale. I am surprised I like this ale. I usually don’t like anniversary or celebration brews, because breweries seem to go a little overboard with themselves for these special ales. I also had an old standby: Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA. Mmmm.

I feel like I deserve these beers because I ran for an hour. An hour!

That may be faulty reasoning.

In fact, I am sure it is faulty reasoning.But I really LOVE beer.

I wasn’t lying before. I really am bad at conflict. I can’t stand conflict, but I also can’t stand being made to feel stupid or inferior for things I believe. I am not intellectual 24/7. I am actually more interested in grace than intellect. Really. I am not sure that, that means I am stupid or naive. I don’t think I am either. Maybe I am. I wouldn’t mind being both on most days.

**EDIT**

I am sitting here trying to read, but I love the bar culture, especially the daytime bar culture so I am not reading much except the people around me.

I see the guy who I call the Gorton’s Fisherman. He smokes his non-filter, hand-rolled cigarettes down to his finger tips before he stands them upright in the ashtray. He sits close to the other regular. Too close. The other regular, who says fuck about every other word, keeps moving further away from Gorton.

Now he is sitting on the edge of his stool like a child watching Dora the Explorer or some other shit like that. He is I, when  little, watching Sesame Street.

Sometimes I see Gorton walking around town with a huge camera around his neck. He is always wearing too many clothes. A rain coat when it isn’t raining. A snow suit when it isn’t snowing. I can’t imagine he isn’t roasting inside all those clothes. I am sure he can smell himself wafting up from the neck of his t-shirt. Or from under the brown Dickie’s coverall he wears right now.

He has greying hair, thinning; a full beard; military or recycled glasses; and big rubber boots like the next door neighbor, Old Man Marley, in Home Alone. You know, the South Bend Shovel Slayer. Gorton wears rubber boots like that. I am waiting for him to come in pushing a snow shovel and dragging a trash can full of salt.

(Now the other regular has moved to another stool.)

I see, or more correctly hear, a girl who can’t be over 25-years old lauding the phenomenal steaks and ribs of Montana Mike’s in Anderson. She also loves Jamison. And she loves Guinness. She is an Irish girl, you know? Whiskey and beer are her staple foods.

She tells the guy sitting next to her that Monatana Mike’s has HUGE portions. Seriously, it’s phenomenal! But ridiculously expensive. Who would spend that much money on a meal!?!

Maybe that last sentiment was about a grocery store. She hasn’t been to a grocery store in forever. Why pay so much for food? Her roommates cook. She eats their leftovers. Fucking mooch.

There is a cook from Vera Mae’s who recently cut his thumb with a Japanese knife. He is a sous chef. Or so he says. He is sitting too close to the woman next to him. Like Gorton’s friend, she scoots across the stool. Wait. Now she slides closer to him. He must have done something right. Somebody’s getting lucky.

Finally, sitting right in front of me are two undergrads. Possibly, they are on a first date. I want to scream to her: run. I haven’t heard you say two words. He occupies conversation. Can you put up with that forever? Think about it. One day you may be the one inching your way across a bar stool just trying to score. Or trying to avoid it.

Everyone talks louder the more they drink. Gorton and his friend slur more. Their fucks come out more like fthuuucksssh. I wish I wasn’t so inebriated myself. I want to remember what Gorton said when he first sat down, but I can’t. His words are at the bottom of my Porter. I need to drink my way down there to retrieve them. I know it had a mix of these curse words: God damned, fuck, and shit. It may have been fucking. But I am not holding my breath.

It’s still fuckin’ work, he says now. What’s he talking about? It’s all fucking work as far as I am concerned. Now he’s not sure. Adamantly. Unsure. I’m not sure. I am not sure. Ahmnohshshuuuurrre. But he’s trying to put it in a little more delicate terms.

And, he has moved over to the stool formerly occupied by the other guy.

Chjeessuss Chrrisstt, Gorton says,  I don’t even want to go to my house. The electric is so expenisve.

Is this a neo-slave narrative?

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Posted in Beer, CNF, Grace, Relationships, Running, Writing

I Remember Now

Posted on 19 January 2009 | 3 comments

I just finishing jogging.

I remember now why I was a distance swimmer.

I remember flinging my body from the starting block into the cool slick water, not wanting to surface. I always wished I could stay under water like a fish or a mermaid, breathing through gills, and propelling along with my flippers. Only I wasn’t a mermaid or a fish. I couldn’t even pretend to be Aquaman. I was just Corby.

My body never warmed up—by warmed up I mean cooperated—until well into the first two hundred yards. those superficial warm-ups Coach made us do before the meets never helped, particularly because my my first event was the butterfly, which was right before diving. Diving was a good forty-five minutes to an hour after our team warm-ups.

The middle hundred yards were spent talking myself into finishing the race. I ached. My shoulders were sore. I wanted to quit.

And the last two hundred yards was spent making up for the time I had lost in the first three hundred. I usually finished a respectable second or third. Once, I even made it to the sectional finals. I came in twelfth. Obviously, I was not Olympic material.

I have kept this same mentality into adulthood. Even though I try to warm up by walking the dogs before I jog, my body takes about the first third of the jog to decide it wants to get warm.

The second third is spent reminding myself why I am doing this: to resurrect my adolescent athlete. The young woman I once was wants to get out. Don’t be mistaken: I was never thin or muscular. I never looked like a jock. When I came in twelfth at sectional, I weighed 170 lbs. Most of my competitors weighed around 100 pounds. Wet. With clothes on.

Sometimes when compared with my teammates I felt a bit like this:beached-whale-15Regardless, the athlete who is trapped inside me is slowly coming back out. Slowly. Like a sloth. But without claws.

The last third of my jogging workout is spent in relative ease, jogging along, not wanting it to stop. I think I need to find a psychological trick to get me into the last third mindset sometime during the first third.

I still like the endurance aspect of distance exercise. I like long, slow exercise.

Please, if you are a speedy guy—like one of my professors, who also happens to be a distance guy—I know the two can go together. I just happen to be slow. I happen to like the leisure that distance events give the participant.

For example, in high school I had 500 yards to plod through. Now I will have 13.1 miles to plod through.

And I do mean plod.

Like a horse.

Maybe like a Lipizanner Stallion.

Only I am not a stallion.

Like a Lipizzaner Mare.

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Posted in Fat, Running

MLK Day. Toni Morrison. Jog-tastic.

Posted on 19 January 2009 | 1 comment

Today is a day that is set aside for education, service, and remembrance. Every year I look forward to attending the Martin Luther King, Jr. service at one of our local churches. This year, though, I am spending the day running and studying. I think I am going to skip the church service.

Today I am reading Playing in the Dark: Whiteness in the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison and Running a Thousand Miles to Freedom: The Escape of William and Mary Craft from Slavery by William and Ellen Craft. I am, as always, amazed by the literary prowess of Morrison. I find myself underlining, nodding my head, and, at times, verbally agreeing with her writing.

I also plan to run today. According to the plan, I am still jogging for three minutes and walking for two. Today I repeat it seven times. Wednesday I repeat it seven times. Friday I repeat it until I complete four miles. I like this plan. It seems to be working better than the couch potato to 5K plan I tried before.

I refuse to run inside. Unless the temperature is below zero, my happy ass is running outside. I read a blog by a woman in Green Bay who runs outside in twenty below zero weather. Her eyelashes were frozen together at the end of the run. That is too much. I am not that extreme. I hope I am never that extreme.

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Posted in Reading, Running, Winter Weather