Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Run

How was the run?

Good, I think. I ran more of it than I expected to run. (I am, recently, out of shape.)

My thanks to my many anonymous contributors. My thanks to my nonymous one, as well. I was able to raise a little money.

I was a little late, and unable to break away from the pack this time, so the view from the top of the viaduct was obscured by the many bodies of my fellow runners.

The following songs appeared on my iPod during the run:

This.

This.

This.

This.

This.

Others, too.

During much of the run, I was behind a woman with a very nice right arm. It was covered in tattoos. A sleeve of tattoos. She had a blond ponytail. Dyed blond, it looked like. She was wearing a pink, anti-breast cancer t-shirt. She stopped to walk fewer times than I did.

Also, at one point I passed a man in a Race for the Cure volunteer t-shirt. He was wearing long khaki pants. He was older, had graying hair. He was running very, very slowly. Running as fast as I usually walk. He was heavy-set. It looked like his knees were stiff. He was covered in sweat, too. His light blue shirt was almost entirely dark blue. I felt bad about the times I had stopped to walk short sections of the race when I saw him. I decided that he had run the entire thing, even though he wasn't in very good shape. And wasn't really wearing proper "running gear."

The run had an entirely shocking laxative effect on me, and I had to find a place to resolve the issue moments after finishing the race. I was sort of emotional—as I tend to get during a run—and then, also, in addition to that fragility, I had this other sense of physical fragility, this other not-at-all complimentary body-born need. In this state, I was handed a bag from Swedish Medical Center, full of the hospital's promotional materials.

In any other state, I think I would have ignored the people handing out the bag. In this state, though, I was particularly easy to influence. I imagine if I had been at home, and telemarketers had caught me in this moment, I would have changed my long distance phone service.

(The bag contained a package of Swedish Fish. I ate them.)

Yes, well.

***

On Friday, my band Fire in My Bag will be playing a long, quiet/loud/quiet set at a place called the School of Visual Concepts. We will be making a live audio collage for an art show. The show has a theme. The theme is "Slippery Reality." We will make noise appropriate to that theme.

It will be sort of like, but not as good as, an episode of Over the Edge.

Wine and food while it lasts.

***

Tonight, my friend Michael will be doing stand-up comedy at The Sunset Tavern.

(In Seattle.)

This is Michael.

So is this.

He's also in a band called The Way It Is. There is a link to the right.

***

Here's a Wordle of this post:



***

I enjoy Wordle, apparently. I used Wordle to make a Creation Stories t-shirt. The words are from the text of reviews people have given Creation Stories on GoodReads.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It appears that you have learned how to blog. That's not a bad thing. Congrats on the book.

I was running for a while too, but my wife broke her ankle and I lost my motivation to run out of sympathy and general lazyness.

Hope you are well.

Take care,

Eli

The Man Who Couldn't Blog said...

I was just thinking about you, Eli! How are you? How bad was the flooding for you and yours?

Write me at

happycobrabooks at gmail dot com

if you get a chance.