January 6: Sliding in to work on rain-slick ice

As e.e. cummings said,
"let all go dear
so comes love."

July 24: The Zen of Running Downhill

As I get older, running gets more challenging. There's always something that hurts, cellulite bounces on once-lean thighs, asthmatic lungs ache. I used to feel like a graceful thoroughbred when I ran, a race horse. For years I ran competitively, and it's hard to let go of that desire to go faster, to be in the lead. Now I feel like a plodding draft horse. But still I do it, still I love the forward motion, knowing that my body parts all still move, if a little less smoothly than they used to.

While I'm slower and shorter of breath now, I try to retain good form. Even when I'm struggling, at least I can still look like I know what I'm doing. The thing I was always best at was running down hills. When I was in 7th grade a coach taught me how to run downhill as a strategy--how to just let go and not resist the forward momentum. If you don't hold back, you go faster. Most runners leaned back on the downhills, trying to stay in control, and that's where I would pass them.

On my current running route, there's a long downhill just before I turn back onto my street to head into the "home stretch." That's when I feel my best, just letting go, letting my legs carry me down the hill, for a moment feeling like I did back in 7th grade: invincible. Those are the moments that keep me going.

How to run downhill:
"let all go dear so comes love"
Nothing else matters.


*Line 2 from a poem by e. e. cummings that begins "Let it go..."

March 14: Moss

On this dreary day of cold rain, I've been wistfully looking out my back window. A pair of crows caws in duet with my neighbor's dog's barking. The river seems to be at a normal water level again after a few days of looking at lines of exposed rocks; the Town must have adjusted the dam upstream. The bare trees show no hint of ever bearing leaves. Rain softly, steadily drums its fingers on the roof. I'm reminded of the last line of a poem by e.e. cummings: "nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands." (Though he's out of vogue now, e.e. cummings' poetry includes some of the most romantic love poems.)

Anxious to find something to lift my spirits, I've been fixating on my shed roof. My eyes are drawn to the bright chartreuse color of the moss on the roof's north-facing side. It's a vibrant, almost electric green. Years ago on a hot summer night on a porch surrounded by lawn and lush fields, a group of friends and I shared a bottle of Chartreuse. Until that evening, I didn't know what Chartreuse was, and hadn't realized that the color name came from the actual color of this liqueur made by French monks out of a veritable garden of herbal extracts. (Their original monastery was in the Chartreuse mountains.) We decided that because it was made by monks, it must be a spiritual sort of drink that would fill us with the green energy of all the plants that made it. It tasted like fresh grass translated into alcohol, distilling into a drink the verdant beauty of the fields that surrounded us. We were imbibing the very place itself, and it felt like magic.

Now this freakish moss, the only green I can see out my window on this mid-March day, has brought me back to that moment. I can almost taste it.

Only green in sight:
chartreuse moss on my shed roof.
The world will revive.