September 07, 2010
Himeji...There's this thing I've grown accustomed to over the last 4 months, something I dub travel sickness. It's not exactly a sickness per se, but it's this feeling of moving on...something new approaching, a new country and new adventure on the horizon and spending the last hours and minutes somewhere about to be left behind. I find I see countries as people - all the people I've met and the things I've witnessed and felt as a collective. I also despise goodbyes because everyone else always gets so fucking worked up. So fucking worked up and that makes me kind of sick.
Today, I was riding the JR back from Shibuya, around two, and I actually fell asleep on a Japanese businessman's shoulder. It was probably only for a second but still...fucking still. I am a literal bastion of grace - shit like that does not happen to me. I was so fucking tired I had to force myself to stand, to ride the wave of that whipping train in hopes that it would somehow sharpen me. I came home and I slept. I took a shower. I feel better now but won't sleep tonight. Tomorrow, this thing ends...or really just begins depending on your angle of approach. Me, I'm looking at it from somewhere in between the two extremes...but closer to the latter. Much closer to the latter.
I want to feel the sun set in my home town again. I want Los Angeles, want her like a faithful, shore-lorn sailor. That's what I am. That's what I'm thinking right now.
September 22, 2010
An Open Letter To My Body...Darling,
Welcome home, welcome home. I am going to speak openly because I know that’s what you both respect and deserve. I understand more than you know. There are blisters and splits on your knuckles, in your palms and on your feet. Your toenails are black – 2 of them. Your left calf is miserable and you haven’t been able to run right since the sixth day of Tokyo. You have traveled the globe, bled across it for the past 4 months. You have been bleeding forever. I know. I understand. You deserve rest, a break, solace. I know. I know. That’s sort of why I’m here. We need to talk…
In the Philippines, something new happened. 70.3 happened, a half Ironman. We stayed in that sun, near 100 degrees and battled for longer than we’ve ever battled before. When it was over, I wanted more. When it was over, I wanted to get out there the next day and do it again, again and again. Fight more. Bleed more. Grow more. Give more. Suffer more. So did you. Don’t forget, I know you too.
Now we’re back in California. Now we’re done slamming our feet across Asia. There’s beautiful and easy access to everything we could ever desire. The rabid dogs are gone…the heat…the kidnapping eyes…broken pedaled and rusted bikes from the 1970’s…posters of Andre Agassi when he had long hair. It’s all gone now. Everything we need is here. Everything we did and everything we saw over these last 4 months has raised us up. I want to draw on it, use it to pick a fight – the biggest one of them all. I want to see what we’re made of, need to see what we’re made of. Both of us.
In 9 weeks, we’re flying to Cozumel. In 9 weeks, on a Sunday, we’re going to wake up to become Ironmen. And I understand what you’re thinking, what you always think for the sake of self-preservation, that Cozumel should be enough. It should. But it’s not. You understand me too. Certainly you saw coming what’s now coming…
Next October, there is a race that happens on an island called Kona, in a state called Hawaii. It may be the world’s toughest. Titans travel from far and wide to line up self-destruction. Don’t play dumb – the Kona fire has been burning for a while now. To get to there, something special needs to happen. There is no disputing that. If what I am about to say seems disregarding, I can offer no apology. You need to ditch this nagging pain and allow me to deliver us. You need to allow my fight every day for the next 7 weeks, and you need to allow it harder than you have ever allowed it before. You need to allow me to break us harder than we’ve ever broken and then come out the next day and break again. You need to simply let go and survive. Be honest with me. Believe me when I say I’ll listen to you, and that I will take care of us. Understand that I aim to chase a beauty beyond capable description, and that great sacrifices must be made. Understand.
To get into Kona, the rules are simple. We have to line up in Cozumel and then finish first, second or third in the men’s 25-29 age group. We don’t stand a chance unless we stand together. I committed long ago. You did too, you just won't admit it. Please consider this - my beg, my plea. Know that I both love you and despise your hesitation, that I am doing this for both of us. Be wicked now, rest is for the defeated…
November 11, 2010
What Do We Call These Again?Listening to The Night Last Night over and over. Rolling. Told someone today I was starting to feel crazy again - not for sake of credit or to give explanation but to mark myself, for myself, a little for them. I'll call it a seed. Separate - I was out to lunch with one of my down home girls this afternoon. She's going through some shit so I'm going through some shit because she's my down home girl. I'm telling myself I'm helping her, always telling myself I'm helping even though I believe myself to be the disconnect, that people listen to me and humor me and my thoughts on their lives and their troubles and either walk away from the conversation saying something like, fuck well at least I'm not that OR well at least he thinks he's helping. At some point, her shit actually did become my shit because the world is fucking small and because my long ago but wrecking-ball-ex happens to be inescapable, not that I'm trying to...escape...anything...anymore. 10 minutes after mentioning her name, far onto something else, I felt wrong, or off, brought it back, deemed it her, thought of certain people holding certain powers over me because of their movements across the world and my hard cock. I decide I have a problem letting go of people that I loved - decided a long, long time ago. Crossing over means I can never cross back. Or retract. No matter how vile or regrettable things get. I decide the only way to not feel thrown when speaking her name is to fuck her again, just once and well. I debate on how to make this happen while thinking back, sitting in front of down home, also a former lover, to a day I told her I loved her then left her, flew to New York, fucked another former like the one now who haunts me to protect myself from down home before she became down home from hurting me like New York had once done but over and over and over. Right now, I'm thinking about how either of them forgave me for that. Did they? Did I just push? I'm thinking of New York. Stuck with that all these years like I was with her? No. Not like me. She'll make excuses. For me, holding me up, better than me. I'll never forget those words from Munich -- I could hear you, on the phone when you went into the other fucking room, talking to her...I shipped your things away because I couldn't have them near me or in my apartment anymore. I feel sick. Sick. -- My absolution came with a hard price. Fucking vicious. I was a monster. That wasn't so long ago. What am I now? Sitting here writing about this girl I have to fuck for peace, thinking about whether or not she reads here anymore, how blown my cover would be if she did, and if she didn't, how destructive it would be after the fact, how plotted, how monstrous still.
November 16, 2010
Chris McCormack...Macca is a true champ, made and then built and built. Off the course, he’s nothing but love, nothing but giving, nothing but heart. On it, when that gun fires, if you’re out there to take what he believes is rightfully his, he becomes something else…the kind of guy who would rip out your throat and then drag you to your children, make you watch as he force-fed it to them. Anything to win — because it’s what he sacrifices for, because it’s what he wakes up day after day to suffer and bleed for, because he knows that giving anything less than everything would be disrespectful to himself and the gift of a life. Because he is a true champ.
I am ready to race. I am full. I stole so much. Macca, you’re my hero. I’ll be chasing you forever, mate.
November 20, 2010
At Least My Apartment Is Clean...There's an SNL marathon and that feels right. Anne Hathaway is on tonight. Saw her last night in Love And Other Drugs. Her body is very good naked and moaning. Good actress. Big eyes. I'm a mess because it's cold and raining and the world is hanging and the race I'm leaving for on Tuesday is a far, far distance away. I won't be better, not really until after it's over and I'm back here, another night thinking about how comforting Saturday Night Live is - how often I write about it, where exactly that all came from and why. Last night I went out thinking someone was going to find their way to my bed, and so I cleaned this place. I thought I was going to find someone to move gently through or not, to exact my poetry upon...or realize my mistake before falling far, far short. The lines in the cleaned carpet have dispersed, but I know they were there, and not too long ago, and for what reason. At some point, I was drifting through a bar, not because I'm telling myself okay time to drift, but because it's all I know how to do, because I'm never a calculated lost, only lost. At some point I was talking to a guy, a good friend actually, who spent the majority of the conversation telling me how terrible it was that people his whole life were trying to dictate his sexuality - before he tried to tell me I could never know mine unless I left myself open - to things - to him - to the possibility of him, essentially - before he became static, despised blind deaf selfish and incredible - before the depressing downgrade began to kick in and I was drifting again, constantly drifting. At some point I was talking to a girl about music, a pretty girl and finely equipped and lovable who was asking me if she could come back to my bed and see my clean carpets and dishes and bathroom, asking me if I would want to have my way with her before I was acting thick, like it went over my head or that I didn't hear it quite right before minutes later she offered herself again, along with her pretty friend, as a pair, seriously, as if to up the ante, before I talked about a friend I had to catch up with across the room before leaving, and that I would be back, always back. Steps away I could feel their rejection, their soon to begin accusations of my homosexuality, as often happens because I don't put my dick in things for the sake of, to battle themselves down, their confusion and potential hurt because I ridiculously give everyone credit of the sensitivity I suffer while dealing with the weight of my lately hopeless pursuits, the potential that they may for a long time be hopeless pursuits, which at this point isn't as heavy as it is expected.
November 29, 2010
The Ironman...
I don't know what I'm feeling right now - tired, broken-hearted, defeated, victorious. It's a mix of a lot of things. I came to the island with a finish time of 10 hours burned into my head, with the grand goal of making it to Kona on my first try. Last year, same race, my age group, 10:30 would have done it. I was on the second lap of my bike, on pace for a 5:15 split, not willing myself that I was okay and strong and steady, but actually okay and strong and steady. I could see my transition into the run ahead, sure I could hold a 3:30 and get invited to Hawaii for the race of all races.
There was a noise coming from my bike, the chain grinding against the frame. I looked down to see that my cranks were somehow coming loose, knowing it was a progressive thing, wondering if I could make it through the last lap without something falling off. 5 miles into the 3rd lap, because of the friction, my chain began to slip to the smaller wheel. I hopped off twice to fix it but the same thing kept happening. It was only another 5 miles before I found a service station, got things tight and back to business. All things considered, I still managed a strong third lap, though I did lose 17 minutes off my pace. Still, I don't think it broke me in any way. I knew the 3:30 marathon could still bring me in around 10:20.
First four miles of the run, I felt good, like I was shot out and on my feet and moving around a 730. By six, I felt as sick as I've ever felt, threw up, felt better, got back into an 8 minute pace, determined to hold steady the rest of the way. Slowly, it started to slip. But something else began to occur to me. The run was broken up into 3 eight mile loops, so I could see everyone running ahead of me - there were a few. Hundred. I thought about it only briefly at the time because brutal pain is an attention seeker, and just kept moving my feet until mile 21, when I knew that if I was going to come in under 11 hours, I would have to chop 2 minutes off my per mile pace and make no stops. Like a ship desperately fleeing attackers in the movies on an open sea, I threw overboard all the flasks and pills and shit I had left in my pockets and tossed my bottle to the side of the road. I took a deep breath. The Killers' "Human" started playing on someone's loud speaker. I laughed. Then, I suffered like I've never suffered in my life before I came in at 10:59:20. That was beautiful.
Later last night, I read the qualifying times for men 25-29 was 9 hours flat. 90 minutes faster than last year, same course. I still don't know how to explain that. It made me feel humbled, and naive, in absolute awe for the strength that was out on the course. And sitting here right now, body in pieces, I feel thunderstruck. At times, hours earlier, I could see myself placing in my division...and in reality, I was getting obliterated, fucking destroyed. That's really something to deal with - I'll never forget it. Today, I've been asking myself how I'm not buried by all of this...or how I can possibly be thinking of all the new ideas I have for training, to shave me down, to toughen me up, to quicken my step. It's all I can think about. And I'm not trying to put a bow on this post. I'm not amateur. I am incredibly happy and proud of what happened yesterday but also somewhat humiliated, and devastated, and that's what I'm locking onto - because I have somehow trained my body to lock onto and love and obsess in the things that make me stronger in this world, that keep me in a constant state of evolution...even if the result of those things appear to destroy me. Right now my body is saying rest up, enjoy December, have some cocktails and let those endless other dreams flourish.
Then...come January, come hungry.
