I am not a good runner. As long as I can remember, my body has felt mostly foreign, a collection of limbs only barely under my control, certainly not a cohesive unit and certainly not capable of anything approaching athleticism. Maybe I grew too fast; maybe it’s just how I’m built. Either way, when in March I willingly laced up running shoes for the first time, I also silently prepared for the apocalypse (or an asthma attack.)
Now that it’s July and the world hasn’t ended, I’ve finally resigned myself to the fact that perhaps I’m just a runner now. Still slow, still lacking in some basic sense of coordination, but a runner nonetheless. I write poems about running. I spend time while commuting picking the best routes to try next. I obsess over Fitbit data like it’s a religious text, a prophecy: here in my daily step count I will find the patterns that predict the future, revealing the secrets of stamina, of strength.
I tried a different route on this run. Up the hill towards Twin Peaks, a few brutal blocks not recommended to trucks (let alone beginning runners) and then a sprint, loose-limbed, down through the Castro towards the bay. By the time I shuddered to a stop in Civic Center, I’d run farther than ever before.
Then I went home and made this pie for my housemate’s birthday. I’m not much of a baker either; I only know three recipes. The homemade crust was a disaster from the start- too sticky, too slow, a horrible floury mess.
It didn’t matter. She came home three hours late. The pie was delicious.
An invitation to be in the moment
This morning we decided on a spontaneous trip to Baker Beach with our two-year-old son.
Our city by the bay is done with Summer. That summertime fog that we wake up to is no more.
Homeward bound after a month in the USA
One day-One Hour- One Minute- It will happen. It is inevitable. Except it already has.
Top 10 Things To Do In San Francisco
If you live in San Francisco, you know to avoid Eddy and Leavenworth Street... *stab*
Wrote this the day after the attacks in Paris but was reminded of it this morning when I read the news about the bombing in Turkey
In Search of Color