HEAD(hed), (n.) 1. the top part of the human body or the front part of an animal where the eyes, nose, east and mouth are. "Your brain is in your head." DIBS(dibz), (n.) 2. a thick, sweet syrup made in countries of the East, especially the Middle East, from grape juice or dates. [Arabic "debs"]--World Book Dictionary, 1976.
Starting chapter 10 exhausted. Need to take a break. The closer to the end I get, the steeper the climb, as it were. Just gets harder near the end. I’m having eye surgery consultation later this week. I’m thinking the eye strain is too much for this little pea brain. Everything jumbles together. But so excited this is happening!
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Trail Run
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Took a trail run at lunch today. 2.67 miles in 40 minutes and some change.
I ran the trail "backwards" today because, well, this hill's been climbed enough. It was time to run down it today. A kind of a victory run, as it were. I needed a little victory run today. Tired of getting my butt kicked. Thought I would kick back today.
Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of work getting to the top and by the time I decided to record this part of the descent, I had already come down quite a ways. And there were two more very large hills yet to climb before I got back to the start. Impossible to get anywhere around here without climbing a hill or seven.
Today I just needed to get out in nature where nothing's in a hurry and everything's on time.
Out on the trails, the only sound heard is the wind in the trees, the birds and squirrels gossiping, the occasional "plop" of someone's fishing line as they hide in the bushes on the banks of a private lake and the huff of an old fat guy running through the woods.
Nature takes it's time out there. Took a gazillion years for every rock to find it's place, for every tree to grow and die and fall and grow again. A terribly busy place for so much to happen so slowly. And everything's right where it should be.
A place where leaves to sprout and grow and flourish and wither and die and fall and eventually find the light of day once as they push out the end of a branch all over again just as they've done a hundred or more tree rings ago.
A place where the Oak and Elm and Sassafras watch the rain peel away layers of earth like an onion, like the skin off some complicated and overly emotional ogre, like scales washing off a dragon who turns out to be an old man with a boyish heart . . . forever refusing to grow up and ancient.
One probably wonders what I’m working on. As an Independent Scholar, as I am not attached to a University, I am writing a commentary on the first book of a personal journal written by a 2nd Century Roman Emperor. In that book he lists 16 names and describes what each person contributed to his life. That’s the short version. I’ve covered the first 8 so far and hit a wall. Now I’ve gone back and am editing Chapters 1-3 to keep my mojo going. Not sure when I’ll be done but hopefully by years’ end. I already have another project lined up.
I'm nearly finished reading Joan Didion's collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. The book was discovered through another book I was reading, Jon Krakauer's Eiger Dreams . If Jon felt this book was good enough to pack along on a mountain climbing expedition, then I'm interested. Took me three tries, but I finally found my copy on Amazon. One of the best book buys I've made. Joan selected the title of this book from William Butler Yeats' classic poem, Second Coming . The book title is shared with one of her larger essays, a record of encounters with people in the 1960's drug culture. Didion's book is divided into three distinct parts: "Life Styles In The Golden Land," a collection of articles capturing the California experience of the 1960's; "Personals," a few of essays of the first-hand nature; and "Seven Places Of The Mind", some thoughts about those parts of California that are now long gone. One essay...
