from the ridiculous to the sublime

After yesterday‘s sordidness (I’m not sure that’s a word, but will press on nevertheless) it seemed time for a little of the higher parts of human nature, a little culture.

Today’s dose of culture comes from one of my favourite books, Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen:

In the eyes of men he falls, and in his own eyes too. He falls from his high place, he trips on his achievement. He falls to you, he falls to know you. It is sad, they say. See his disgrace, say the ones at his heel. But he falls radiantly toward the light to which he falls. They cannot see who lifts him as he falls, or how his falling changes, and he himself bewildered till his heart cries out to bless the one who holds him in his falling. And in his fall he hears his heart cry out, his heart explains why he is falling, why he had to fall, and he gives over to the fall. Blessed are you, clasp of falling. He falls into the sky, he falls into the light, none can hurt him as he falls. Blessed are you, shield of falling. Wrapped in his fall, concealed within his fall, he finds his place, he is gathered in. While his hair streams back and his clothes tear in the wind, he is held up, comforted, he enters into the place of his fall. Blessed are you, embrace of the falling, foundation of the light, master of the human accident.

I was thinking of this when I was running today and, as you do, making some new connections in my mind.

Firstly, as prayers go, “Blessed are you, embrace of the falling, foundation of the light, master of the human accident” is one of the most beautiful I’ve heard.

Secondly, I was thinking of the sentence that precedes that “While his hair streams back and his clothes tear in the wind, he is held up, comforted, he enters into the place of his fall”. I do love this concept, that in the midst of utter disaster, we lose all the pride and intellect and all the things that keep us safe, but, stripped of this safety, we gain the ability to do something truly remarkable. For Leonard Cohen, this is about God.

That goes some way to explaining the appeal of distance running to me. Running is hard work, there’s no getting away from that. It’s sweaty, and wet, and painful and it rips at your lungs and after a few hours you start to lose the ability to think clearly. It can also take your pride and your dignity and leave you standing alone on the side of the road, devastated, with 5km left of a marathon to run.

But in the midst of that, and in fact partially because of it, it’s about as close as I come to proper peace.

Running
14.4 peaceful kms this lunchtime. Peaceful, despite a fairly distopian setting along the western side of the Capital City Trail, Docklands and Latrobe street.

degrees of stupidity

I’ve known of the existence of Kyle Sandilands for a while now. I saw him briefly on Australian Idol and came rapidly to the conclusion he was one of the most talentless, witless, smug and irritating fools it has ever been my displeasure to encounter. However, other that adding him to my list of “Things that prove the world is going to hell”, I’ve been content to live my life as if he doesn’t exist.

A life lived like that is very pleasurable.

I’ve also known there is someone who calls herself “Jackie O” who, aside from being blonde, has only one talent – putting up with Kyle Sandilands for a living. Again, I’m content to leave her and her co-“star” to their audience of pre-teens and deeply sad adults.

Sadly the two of them have thrust themselves into my conciousness over the last 24 hours, due to a radio interview they did in which a 14 year-old girl, who had been raped 2 years earlier, was hooked up to a lie-detector machine and interrogated by her mother about her sex life, live on the radio.

Put like that, it doesn’t sound too good. The thing is, it sounded worse at the time. You can listen to it here: http://media.news.com.au/multimedia/mediaplayer/main/index.html?id=1285

No-one involved should be proud of what happened there. The worst behaviour came from the girl’s Mum, who knew of the rape incident and still grilled her about her sex life.

I’m prepared to believe the radio hosts genuinely didn’t know that was going to happen. If you look at what happened immediately after the girl mentioned rape, it was entirely predictable. Kyle’s mouth went into gear hours before his brain and said something unbelievably stupid. “Jackie O” wasn’t quite as stupid, and actually revealed an unexpected level of sensitivity and common sense.

So, I accept they didn’t actually intend to brutally and publicly humiliate a 14 year-old rape victim.

But that’s the best you can say about them. They were clearly happy with interrogating a 14 year-old girl about her sex life live on the radio. They knew the questions, they knew her age, they’d done this thing often before and they clearly thought it was entertaining for their audience.

They laughed when the girl said “I don’t want to do this, I’m scared”.

Everyone involved – presenters, producers, the radio station owners, the lie detector operator, the mum – should hang their heads in shame and, if they still have their jobs come this time tomorrow, should consider themselves extremely lucky.

Running
13.6km fast yesterday. 11km not quite so fast today.

results and pictures

The results are out from Sunday’s Sri Chinmoy run at Princes Park. I came 19th our of 150 or so. Not bad.

There are also quite a few photos of me in there, mostly because, contrary to my usual practice of making frantic “no” gestures with my right hand and shielding my eyes with the left, I played up for the camera a bit on the day. Here’s one….

Me towards the end of the 30km run

Cake
I stumbled across a blog called “Cake wrecks” this morning. It gave me about 2 minutes of amusement – that’s all – but that’s probably more than you can say about most things in life. Here’s the first of the cake wrecks:

Running
None since the weekend. I’ve been too busy at work and too grumpy and tired at night. I will try to run today though.

cuteness

I had what felt like a bit psychological moment today. It was lunch-time. I had changed into my running gear and was trying to figure out where to run. Then – as is from nowhere – came a thought “You know: I can’t be bothered.”

And it was true – I couldn’t be bothered.

Not sure what this all means.

Kids
I don’t usually write too much about my personal life on this blog. I’m old-fashioned enough to value having at least some things kept private. This can be the exception that proves the rule.

Yesterday after the run I was feeling a touch sore, so of course my 3 year-old son wanted to play horsies on the living-room floor (polished floorboards – no carpet). I said “Daddy has sore legs right now, from running”.

He thought carefully about this and said “Daddy, it’s okay. I have a washer and some clean, cold water”.

He then proceeded to wet a washer and “clean” my left shin, after which he decided I must be better; better enough to play horsies anyway.

Who can argue with logic like that? Physiotherapists everywhere beware: my first-born son may just put you out of business.

sri chinmoy princes park run

Well Beth the Physio either didn’t object to me running today or I completely ignored her advice – I conveniently disremember. And it was rather a good thing too.

A good run was had by one and all and, more importantly (within the confines of this blog), by me. I met up with Tiger Boy and some of the usual suspects at the start and had a chat, including the following gem of wisdom from yours truly: (imagine chattering teeth – it was cold) “I’m not going to run this one fast, what with my dodgy knee”.

Even as I said it, part of me was thinking “but maybe??????”.

That adventurous part of me won out, and instead of trolling along with the 5 minute pace bus I settled into a nice comfortable 3 hour marathon pace. The first km was exactly 4 minutes 17: I checked. The funny thing was, it was actually comfortable, and remained so for the first three laps of Princes Park. After then it got even more comfortable and, horror of horrors, I actually began to enjoy the running. The laps seemed to fly past, with each 5 km lap the time ticked along by 21 minutes or thereabouts.

At about 24km in I caught up with a guy called Andrew and we ran most of the rest of the race together, keeping a nice pace going. At the last hilly Zoo section Andrew lost touch with me by a few metres and I had a rush of energy and a kick home.

My time was 2 hours 7 minutes, which I’m happy with. It was more or less exactly the pace I ran the first 30km of Gold Coast, but I didn’t feel like death.

Now, a dilemma. Do I take this as an omen that I could and should run the full Melbourne Marathon in October? Or do I take this as reassurance that, Gold Coast aside, I can actually run a bit, and then allow my body the rest it probably craves? I’ve started to have chest pains lately that I’m cheerfully half-ignoring.

freezing cold

After yesterday’s brief flirtation with muli-linguialism, today a return to this blog’s normal policy: plain old English, and a particularly threadbare, clumsy, charmless variety of English at that.

Looking at all those pictures of sweating marathoners choofing along the boulevarde in the south of France had me feeling all summery and happy, but last night froze the life out of me.

I got home early and went for my normal 12.5km run. That was cold, with only my t-shirt and a pair of old running shorts that resemble the shroud of Turin for warmth. When I got back it was brought to my attention that the dog needed walking and that, as I was decked out in running attire, I was the best and only candidate for the job.

Dog walking was much colder, what with my sweaty shirt flapping icily against my stomach and chest and my hands exposed. At one point Buffy (the dog, not the vampire slayer) took off in pursuit of a local cat with an astonishing display of raw speed and power. I was holding her lead at the time, but only just. I think my hand started to snap at the wrist. It was frozen solid.

By the time I got home and jumped in the shower, my hands were burning.

I do like winter, but there are limits.

Running
12.5km last night and another 13km this lunch-time – up through Fitzroy and Clifton Hill to the Fairfield boathouse and then back to work.

Sri Chinmoy
Depending on the whim of Beth the Physio (AKA Claws of Steel), I may or may not make an appearance at the Sri Chinmoy Princes Park 30km this Sunday morning. If I do, it won’t be terrifically fast.

I considered running this event in 2007. In fact I even drove out there and parked on Royal Parade, all set to go. But then I thought about running around the same old boring Princes Park circuit 6 whole times and it just seemed too much. It was a bit of a dilemma: on the one hand there was 2 hours worth of boredom. On the other hand, there were pancakes at the end of it. In the end I ran a lap of the Capital City Trail, which is more or less 30km, then took the kids out for breakfast/brunch.

We’ll see how I go this weekend.

le marathon

I did momentarily consider composing this post entirely in la langue d’amour, but a few stunted sentences proved it would be trop difficile. Like it or not, my high school days are lost way back in a particularly deep fog of time and high school french lessons, while I’m pretty sure they existed, are lost in an even thicker, more impenetrable fog.

Although, given today’s subject matter, I should probably call it un brouillard impénétrable.

Anyway, this is rapidly becoming tres ennuyeux, so I’ll get to the point: I think I’ve found the marathon for me. It’s called le Marathon des Alpes-Maritimes. It’s in France, obviously, and runs between Nice and Cannes.

Here’s a link to the course description: http://www.marathon06.com/parcours.htm

And if your French is as poor as mine, here it is in English: http://www.marathon06.com/AN/parcours.htm. Some of the instructions haven’t held up too well in translation, but you’ll get the point.

Anyway, I think it would be quite nice, in a way, running along the Mediterranean seaside, running myself progressively uglier amongst le beau monde.

Here are some pictures, from les Galeries photos:

It looks nice. Also flat. I can’t seem to see any femmes in the photos, but I assume they’re in there somewhere, unless they’ve left it up to Triple J to organise.

The setting makes the event a little more attractive then, say, the Traralgon Marathon, which I’m told is a nice run but lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.

Le Marathon des Alpes-Maritimes is positively brimming over with je ne sais quoi. In fact, I can’t be sure but it seems likely that, somewhere among the page on inscriptions, there isn’t a requirement to have both un certificat médical and to be de rigeur.

So, it’s in November and I don’t have anything pressing planned for that month. Work can wait.

The only problem is finding beaucoup euros to fly myself over there and accomodate myself in the style to which I would like to become accustomed, or even the style to which I have become accustomed, which is considerably more modeste, worse luck.

Now would be an excellent time to discover an extremely frail, impressionable, long-lost multi-millionaire uncle. Either that or a winning lottery ticket.

drunk yoga

This is one of those things that make you laugh, but are actually pretty sad. It’s Drunk People doing Yoga Positions.

Here are some samples:

Nice.

Running
None. I meant to run this lunch-time but forgot to bring my running shirt. There would be some sort of riot if I were to go running topless through central Melbourne, so: no dice. It’s okay, my knee could probably use the break.