Reflection

 "What are you training for?" 

"Life, and a way to journey through it." 

Why do I run? What do I seek, if anything? 

Perhaps I am only a restive soul searching for quietude in the physical weariness of a long distance run, finding a restorative panacea in the aching limbs desire for simple steps forward. A solace I grant myself.

Today is Giving Tuesday, an answer to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. For me, it is another day to move forward and raise awareness. The fundraiser is on-going, please consider a small donation to the Semper Fi Fund or to the Suffer Better crew by clicking on the links below. 

 

If you want to join me along the way (especially for the miles through DC!), please either DM me or email me. 

On the way to 50 at the CR24. Photo by Ricky Scott

With a glimpse at my humor at the running a 1.187-mile circuit course for 50 miles, and in keeping with my theme of reflection, I leave you with the following: 

This entity I call my mind, this hive of restlessness,

this wedge of want my mind calls self,

this self which doubts so much and which keeps reaching,

keeps referring, keeps aspiring, longing, towards some state

from which ambiguity would be banished, uncertainty expunged;

this implement my mind and self imagine they might make together,

which would have everything accessible to it,

all our doings and undoings all at once before it,

so it would have at last the right to bless, or blame,

for without everything before you, all at once, how bless, how blame?

this capacity imagination, self and mind conceive might be the "soul,"

which would be able to regard such matters as creation and

     destruction,

origin and extinction, of species, peoples, even families, even mine,

of equal consequence, and might finally solve the quandary

of this thing of being, and this other thing of not;

these layers, these divisions, these meanings or the lack thereof,

these fissures and abysses beside which I stumble, over which I reel:

is the place, the space, they constitute,

which I never satisfactorily experience but from which the fear

I might be torn away appalls me, me, or what might most be me?

Even mine, I say, as if I might ever believe such a thing;

bless and blame, I say, as though I could ever not.

This ramshackle, this unwieldy, this jerry-built assemblage,

this unfelt always felt disarray: is this the sum of me,

is this where I'm meant to end, exactly where I started out?

"The Clause" by C.K. Williams
from The Singing.
Copyright: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.