50 K

CRIT
08-20-02022

It’s Saturday at 3:00 PM and I’m sitting in the garden patio at the Long Beach Airport. My eyes are wandering through TᕼE ᖇEᗷEᒪ, by ᗩᒪᗷEᖇT ᑕᗩᗰᑌᔕ. Behind me, a live musical duo is hurling 𝒥𝒶𝒸𝓀 𝒥𝑜𝒽𝓃𝓈𝑜𝓃 covers out of Jazz trumpets like mortar shot. In front of me, maybe about a ½ mile out on the tarmac, bodies in blue jumpsuits scurry around a blimp like ants around a queen. The blimp is wrapped with ads for the 33rd anniversary of 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹™’𝘀 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗸 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸™.

Inside me are『 thoughts 』.

『 How often I find myself in settings so over-saturated, so bustling with stimuli that no one seems to desire. 𝒥𝒶𝒸𝓀 𝒥𝑜𝒽𝓃𝓈𝑜𝓃 jazz covers & 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗸 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸™ blimps  . . . invasive, unsolicited, buckshot, embedding shrapnel in my psyche . . . and micro-plastics in sharks 』

『 Sharks predate my species by 400 million years, probably because they aren’t the type to expend resource wrapping blimps in ads for 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸™. 』

『”ᖇEᗷEᒪᒪIOᑎ Iᔕ ᗷOᖇᑎ Oᖴ TᕼE ᔕᑭEᑕTᗩᑕᒪE Oᖴ IᖇᖇᗩTIOᑎᗩᒪITY ᑕOᑎᖴᖇOᑎTEᗪ ᗯITᕼ ᗩᑎ ᑌᑎᒍᑌᔕT ᗩᑎᗪ IᑎᑕOᗰᑭᖇEᕼEᑎᔕIᗷᒪE ᑕOᑎᗪITIOᑎ.” That’s good . . .  I can use that. 』

The spectacle of irrationality is floating into the sky now, with the incomprehensible goal of increasing 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗸 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸™ viewership. 𝒥𝒶𝒸𝓀𝓎 𝒥'𝓈 lazy banger, 𝐵𝒶𝓃𝒶𝓃𝒶 𝒫𝒶𝓃𝒸𝒶𝓀𝑒, is playing for the 3rd time in 31 minutes . . .

♪҉♪҉ But, baby, you hardly even notice

♪҉♪҉ When I try to show you this

♪҉♪ Song is meant to keep you

♪҉♪ From doing what you're supposed to.

Is it the 3rd time, or am I looping? What was I supposed to do again . . . rebel?

In 31 hours, I’ll be running 31 miles through the Sierra Nevada mountain range. A race of irrationality to celebrate my incomprehensible mental condition. My longest run yet; my longest lesson in how to say YES & NO at the same time. YES to a next stride-on-trail and NO to no-stride, or every other stride in every other direction. Every YES in open rebellion against every NO. YES as ꙄƎY or SƎ⅄ or Y̵̰̐̃̈́̐̿̅̓̓̚͘Ę̵̫̲̦̟͖̩̹̬̄͑̅́̀̓̆̓͜S̴̞̭͇͔̮̲̩͒̒Ṇ̷́̎͂̑̑̚͘͝O̸̪̗̙̝̍̀̂̔̒͠. Each footfall YES & NO collapse into Yට. “Yට Earth” says the foot.

It only Yට’s every instant. Is that true? When did I forget that?

Sunday 5:00 AM and I’ve just pulled the ⓉⓌⓄ ⓄⒻ ⓅⒺⓃⓉⒶⒸⓁⒺⓈ, the card of changes, of the haze between dualities . . . of the begrudging allies. Everyday, something in our script flips; today, 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕋𝕒𝕣𝕠𝕥 has underscored this. The race starts in 2 hours.

It’s 6:58 AM, and a drone is buzzing 10 feet above us. There is always a drone above us these days. I think . . .

『 A drone’s only job is to mate with the queen bee. 』

Someone says “GO”, so I go.

In a waistband pocket over my tailbone I’ve stowed a small totem, a yellow resin Lion embedded with crystal shards. At mile 7, I go to give it a pat, but I can’t because it is gone. Changes.


『 Changes . . .  in the ⓅⒺⓃⓉⒶⒸⓁⒺⓈ suit, an Earth element card. 』 

My hand strikes out and plucks a bushy pinch of neon-green wolf lichen off a Ponderosa Pine.

『 Today, neon-green is my color. I am not a lion, today. Today, I’m a mountain hare with a bushy green lichen tail. Today, this trail is home. 』 

The THC I took at 6:30 AM floods my consciousness and I change with the new intensity. I’m feeling ටƒ trail now; ටƒ ground-foot-body-breath-sky. Just waves of intensity flowing over a surface. A sine, a runner is a sine wave, not some institution of bodily force flowing over a separate institution called ‘Trail’. It’s all force now, all Yට Yට Yට. Spiral’s of force reverberate up from each sole-earth connection, sending their own waves, their own flows up my body and out in all directions. Wave in flows into waves into flows, ᔕᒪOᗯ & ᔕTEᗩᗪY, like a herd of cosmic turtles.

ᔕᒪOᗯ & ᔕTEᗩᗪY. I’m ready to rebel with some ᔕᒪOᗯ & ᔕTEᗩᗪY.

I feel my good friend running 5 feet ahead of me. I have no way of knowing what he is ready for, but I know full well he is ready to meet it; to rebel.

These are the people I flow with. Those who are ready to rebel against . . .  


I get slapped with a decade-old memory of my grandmother. The time I heard the last words I would ever heard her speak.

『 I enter her hospital room. Nurses in a rush, pale blue nitrile hands crafting an apparatus of bags, needles, & tubes. They move with such detached urgency, following codes that overlay the emotional beings in the room. Grandma's eyes are wet, red, & looking through me. 』

『 “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.” she is rasping. Over & over; her panic mantra. “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.” I smelled artificial lemon scent. 』

『 ‘I’ didn’t have sway over her failing esophagus, her cascade of shutdown. She’s fading out, but can not meet it. I can’t meet it either. I want to make things better, to ease suffering. There’s too much here; it’s consuming her, and it will consume me. I’m not brave enough to stay in this room, thick with lemon scent & her fear of death. I turn. I leave. Her last words to me were “don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.” I heard them fading out as I walked down the hallway. 』

『 “TᕼOᔕE ᗯᕼO ᒪOᐯE, ᖴᖇIEᑎᗪᔕ ᗩᑎᗪ ᒪOᐯEᖇᔕ, KᑎOᗯ TᕼᗩT ᒪOᐯE Iᔕ ᑎOT OᑎᒪY ᗩ ᗷᒪIᑎᗪIᑎG ᖴᒪᗩᔕᕼ, ᗷᑌT ᗩᒪᔕO ᗩ ᒪOᑎG ᗩᑎᗪ ᑭᗩIᑎᖴᑌᒪ ᔕTᖇᑌGGᒪE Iᑎ TᕼE ᗪᗩᖇKᑎEᔕᔕ ᖴOᖇ TᕼE ᖇEᗩᒪIᘔᗩTIOᑎ Oᖴ ᗪEᖴIᑎITIᐯE ᖇEᑕOGᑎITIOᑎ ᗩᑎᗪ ᖇEᑕOᑎᑕIᒪIᗩTIOᑎ.” That’s good . . .  I can use that. 』

18 miles to flow.


I think . . .

『 I incessantly want to make things better, to ease any present fear. But there is too much of it to manage in my Grandmother’s hospital room. I’m afraid that it will snuff me, blow me out like the last candle against the night; a fear I can’t ease. I gotta flee, gotta shield the part of myself that fears an unknown night. Grandma & me, just two white-knuckle spirits holding hopeless against a setting sun. No way to flow. 』

18 miles into this trail race, I’m on my way to flow. I'm just a windmill full of flywheels, rotating down and up and everywhere. Waves of intensity flowing along a plane labeled ‘Ｔｒａｉｌ ’.

It’s a downhill ‘ Ｔｒａｉｌ ’ now, and ‘Ｉ’ am behind me by seconds and steps. There’s no space in the present when decent running at full tilt; 10000 calculations based on 10000 feedbacks determine each footfall. By 10000, I mean infinite. And by infinite, I mean 1. 1 windmill-o-spirals, or cosmos-o-orbits, or 1 eternal . . .  my touch & go soles whip across flagstones saying . . .

𖣘 Yට  𖣘 Yට 𖣘 Yට.

I hear my breath and feel 10000 microbes–forest flywheels–rush in, interfacing with a motion-density called ‘ ＲＵＮＮＥＲ ’. I think . . .

『 Welcome, microbes, you are now ‘ ＲＵＮＮＥＲ ’. Please enjoy your stay. 』

I think . . .

『 Trees are just fast stones, and runners are just fast trees, or slow comets, which are just very fast stones. 』


And I’m slapped again with a memory of my Grandmother. A flywheel spinning up to consciousness from some unknown internal cosmos.

Yට Grandma.

『 In-home hospice now; she hasn’t spoken for days. Every breath is a rasp; a “Gᵤₕ ₕᵤₐₐₐₐₐ” spaced out just far enough from the last to make me wonder if the next will come at all. I thought death pounced like a jungle cat, but this one is slow-spiraling in, tighter & tighter, like a silent shark. My uncles discuss the fate of her basset hound in terse whispers. No one wants it, including me; it’s noisy & smelly. It was purchased recently in haste, days after its preceding hound died. My uncles feared the implications of Grandma’s lack of companionship. She was very warm to it, though. When she saw it, she said it was the first time she knew her dog would outlive her. But it feels a painful topic to be discussing this close to her struggling breath. I tell them they should talk somewhere else. They feign the protest of those who know a stance is weak. She can hear you, I say. They don’t believe it and I don’t really either. But I ask her to blink, blink if she can hear us. Her lids struggle shut . . . then relax open.

ᔕᒪOᗯ & ᔕTEᗩᗪY.

I’m struck, because this was not supposed to work. Blink, I say again. Again . . .ＢＬＩＮＫ. I don’t ever cry but I’m crying. My uncles are silent now.

I’m telling her that we already said it all, because all we said was ＇ＬＯＶＥ＇. I’m telling her, I was sorry for running away from her hospital room . . . sorry that I couldn’t meet her at her fear. I’m so sorry for running. A few days later, she died. 』


. . . I don’t know why this account of my 50K became an account of my Grandmother's death, but that is what running does: it shakes old stories loose. Not violently, though; it shakes like a breeze shakes a tree. Eventually, things stuck up in the limbs fall into consciousness. I’m trying to show you this process by alternating vignettes of this run and this death. As a literary device, dear reader, did it work?

And I still don’t know why I run, but I know it is what I should be doing. Finding a ᔕTIᒪᒪ & ᔕTEᗩᗪY center in so much motion is grand training for navigating our culture of extreme, and extremely false, dualities. When I run, I remember to forget them . . . I’ll probably need to forget that too, as I keep on running.

I feel like forgetting is remembering’s equal.

And I don’t know why we shy from death. It might be because death is so, so ＶＡＳＴ. That vastness turns our gaze back onto our life. A life that must to be so, so ＶＡＳＴ.

So, do I keep running in frantic sprints? Blast the tiny span between my Southern Angels & Northern Demons? No, I don’t want that. The more I live the more I know that I can only run with life as well as I run with death. One foot descends as the other rises, that is running. If I insist on continuing to run, better to run in a center . . . as a center. Let all the Angels, Spirts, & Demons rush around me; run in-out-and-through me. Let me run as a crossroads.

𖣘 Yට  𖣘 Yට 𖣘 Yට 𖣘 TᕼEᖇE ᗯE 𖣘 Gට 𖣘 Gට 𖣘 Gට 𖣘

24 miles covered in this story. . . that leaves 7 miles to go. My body is all a flow with endorphins, pains are shifting over me like the tectonic plates. No, not pain . . . intensities. Pain as intensity, everything as intensity, waves to be dissipated over distances. This distance is 31 miles. Another distance is as long as my life. Another . ? . ? . ?

The feeling of an intensity dissipating over distance is so much more sensational than any finish line, any bogus threshold of ending in the unbounded space of life. Any ‘finish’ is a forgery of totality. Anything that has an 🄴🄽🄳 has at its 🄴🄽🄳 a lie.

And still, I’m so relieved at the sight of it, that finish line, that death of a distance traveled. The frothy 🄴🄽🄳 bubbling of undulating waves of the ⒺⓃⒹⓁⒺⓈⓈ.

What a lovely game of pretend.