when you awaken at some ungodly hour
ease your way around your dreaming spouse
to sneak through the house like a thief
and put on your running shoes
and even the cats look at you
as though you’ve lost your mind:
you will ask
why am I doing this?
because.
because when you begin to run
down the street
your footsteps will echo
off the sleeping houses.
Author: Professor B
My fabulous car crash
So I’m driving along a two-lane highway in upstate New York on a pleasant afternoon in May, with two of my four kids in the back seat: Josie, my stepdaughter, almost nine years old; and my daughter Gabriela, eight. One of them says, hey my iPod battery has run down. Let me see that, say I, and start to fumble with the iPod and a charging device. Now I look up and see I have drifted into the left lane and say oh shit — steering wheel in my left hand, iPod in my right — and overcorrect to the right. Next thing I realize is that we are going off the road, and I have enough time to think, ok, we are going off the road, what next? Next is that terrible sound and sensation of thud. Then I realize that we are upside down, and I am thinking, ok, this isn’t good, and start trying to figure out how to extricate myself, having forgotten for the time being about the girls. That’s the last thing I remember until an indeterminate number of minutes later, when I’m on my back being questioned by paramedics.
According to what I’ve been told, another motorist driving behind us saw the whole thing and came to our aid. We had gone into the ditch on the right of the road and rolled one and a half times. She helped each of us out through the holes where the windows had formerly been. I am told I was conscious and talking, though I remember none of this. She then got my wife Amy’s phone number from Josie, and called her. Amy set out driving the five-plus hours to where we were, with our other two kids coming along for lack of any child care.
I can remember having trouble reciting my address when asked by the paramedics, and being told that we would take a helicopter ride to a hospital better equipped for head traumas than the nearest place, which happened to be half a mile from the site of the accident. Josie and Gabriela were taken there, and got lousy care. Josie had been briefly unconscious and had a gash on her leg below the knee, good for ten stitches; Gabriela had some cuts on her hand but was otherwise relatively unscathed. The personnel attending to Josie should have had the sense to follow standard protocols for kids who have likely concussions, but did not. We got her proper follow-up care after we got home.
The girls told me that as we were about to be loaded into our respective ambulances, I gave them the thumbs-up sign. It’s gratifying to hear that I tried to give them some proper parental reassurance.
I recall some of the helicopter ride, such as lying on the floor as the paramedics cut me out of my clothes. Have you ever had the thought — or had someone tell you — as you were getting dressed, that you should wear nice underwear in case you get into a serious accident? As we were preparing to leave for this trip — the return trip following a weekend at my parents’ house — I was looking around for clean underwear, and had trouble finding some. So I said the hell with it, and pulled on my jeans. It’s a safe bet that the paramedics were unfazed by the sight of my dick.
As we flew along I said to them that I usually had plenty of snappy jokes but was sorry that I could not come up with anything at the moment. They said don’t worry about it. It seems that when we’re in crisis, sometimes our minds want to cling to normality. I have this image of myself as affable and funny, so I wanted to be affable and funny.
I was thirsty and asked them for water. They said, sorry, we can’t give you any because you might have to go right into surgery. I thought it unfortunate that they couldn’t give me water because I was thirsty; I was indifferent to the prospect of surgery. I asked whether the girls were ok, and recall hearing one of paramedics remark to the other that it was the third time in ten minutes I had asked that same question — the point being not that I was annoying but that I had a head injury.
There came a moment in which I thought, this is what is happening and I do not like it, but I don’t have to like it. Just be present to what is. That’s what we call Practice.
The first few hours at the hospital are vague. Someone gave me a phone and I spoke to my wife, and ex-wife, crying into the phone with anguish at having rolled the car with our kids in it. I was assured the girls were OK. I remember being presented with the standard forms on a clipboard, and a pen. I was trying to read, lying flat on my back with the clipboard blocking my light, and no reading glasses. I was particularly interested in finding the agreement to pay clause so I could cross it out and initial it, this being my invarying practice. I tried to sit up to get better light, and got into a bit of an argument with my handlers, telling them I do not sign open-ended guarantees to pay arbitrary sums of money for yet-to-be-determined services, insurance notwithstanding. (In fact, no one should ever agree to these terms, but should resist in self-defense and as protest against the broken healthcare system.) They finally said forget it, don’t sign.
I had a concussion, cervical fracture and scalp lacerations. The neurosurgeon told me I was lucky, which struck me as rather a strange remark until I realized that he meant relative to what might have happened. Curiously, these injuries haven’t been particularly painful. People kept offering me morphine, and I would say, no thanks, what for? I wanted to be lucid to enjoy my wife’s eventual arrival. Finally she did, no thanks to the utter lack of signage pointing the way to this primitive outpost in rural Pennsylvania. She stayed with me as much as she could, and spent the night on a chair in the waiting area when they kicked her out of the ICU.
A guy punched staples into my scalp, in a scene reminiscent of the movie The Wrestler. It was painful, so I was joking that it didn’t hurt, and was that the best he could do? As he finished the job, he said he was done but he could give me another staple if I wanted. Not really, I confessed.
About 24 hours after I was admitted, some physical therapists got me out of bed, walked me around the ward and pronounced me fit to leave. My wife drove us all back home to New Jersey, where I convalesced for a month.
Staying out of work was a pleasure. The first few days were difficult, because I was banged up, but the rest was a joy. If retirement is like this, I’m ready. My neurosurgeon told me we could not even discuss running for two months. After nearly fainting from the initial shock (I am a devoted distance runner), I recovered almost immediately, resigning myself to reality and realizing that worrying doesn’t help.
I spent my days shuffling around the house, gradually doing more activities like housework, and taking advantage of the free time to do more zazen than usual. Paperwork and phone calls about insurance and medical bills also consumed substantial amounts of time. The financial impact of lost wages, replacing the car, etc., is non-trivial but tolerable.
Spending ten hot summer weeks in a neck brace also sucked, but I tolerated it without complaining overly much. I came out of the neck brace in early August; at the end of September I ran a half-marathon within the moderately ambitious goal of 1:40:00 that I had set, finishing in 1:38:48. This result is far from a personal record, but coming just a few months after being airlifted away from an auto accident, I accept it with gratitude.
untitled
the cats stand silent
in the kitchen
waiting for the food to improve
untitled
cool summer afternoon
after the rain
the cat blinks into the breeze
Marathon
running, running we run
our thousands of feet
follow the road
towards Boston.
somewhere along mile 25
I understand this moment
as no different from any other.
devoid of content,
this very moment
is exactly emptiness.
Running the 2011 Boston Marathon
I rode Amtrak from Newark on Sunday and lodged at the Hilton in the Financial District. After putting down my gear I went to the expo where you get your number, and did not hang around long. Those big convention center affairs are oppressive and I wasn’t much interested in shopping. The marathon included a pasta buffet dinner, and having no other hot date lined up I decided I might as well. It was no better than satisfactory, which is OK for these purposes. After dinner I lay in a hot bath and managed to let the jitters subside to some extent. Got to bed reasonably early and woke up at 4:15, an hour ahead of the alarm and redundant wake-up call.
Even if you aren’t ADD-afflicted, It is good practice to arrange your countless little items the night before.
The buses to the start in Hopkinton were about a 12-minute walk from the hotel. Instead I spontaneously shared a short cab ride with two other runners, also strangers to each other. Everywhere I went I found good vibes and camaraderie. It’s easy to strike up a conversation with people with whom you have such an intense common interest. On the bus I sat next to a Canadian woman who had to be well over 60 and who knows what it is to train in truly cold weather and snow — not like us New Jersey wimps. Before the start the runners wait for a couple hours in an outdoor area known as Athlete’s Village, where armed guards, attack dogs and razor wire keep the athletes from escaping. Despite the forecast for textbook-perfect weather, it was cold, and the ground was wet. I wished I’d had as much foresight as the people who brought ground cloths and other appropriate equipment. I was shivering much of the time, my cotton layers insufficient against the wind.
For readers who are not familiar with the marathon game, a little context: the world record is just a little over two hours. From my perspective, anything under three hours is astounding. The entrance requirement for the prestigious Boston Marathon is to demonstrate your credibility by running an officially recognized marathon within a set time, adjusted for gender and age, in the 18 months prior to the race. The Boston qualifying standard for my age bracket is currently 3:35; all Boston qualifying times will become five minutes tougher as of 2013. Having [qualified in New York in 2009](http://vernontbludgeon.com/blog/archives/2009/11/running_the_2009_ny_marathon.html), I was now here to crack 3:20:00 and needed to average a fraction over 7:37 per mile. It’s all relative, to be sure, but I think it fair to say that a sub-3:20 marathon, when you are six weeks short of 53 years old, is pretty damn good. It’s a BQ (Boston Qualifier) with 15 minutes to spare, 10 minutes by the 2013 standard.
My training had gone well, and I had plenty of sage advice from experienced, excellent Boston marathoners (e.g., a guy whom we will call Bill Haskins to protect his privacy), hence a pretty clear notion of what to do. Stick to your pace and no faster — as with any marathon. Beware of the early miles which are downhill, and can seduce you into going too fast and trashing your quads. If you’ve managed your pace intelligently, then after the last of the infamous Newton Hills around mile 21 you can pick up the pace and seal the deal.
At last we get moving, and the cold is an issue no more. There is no other sound like the patter of thousands of shoes trodding the asphalt.
These are my unofficial mile splits:
Mile 1: 7:57. Too congested. There was little I could do about that so I tell myself not to worry, in fact maybe this is good. Start out easy and make it up later.
Mile 2: 7:07. Oops. Didn’t mean to make it up all at once.
Mile 3: 7:11. Shit. Got to get this under control.
Mile 4: 7:26. Still too fast.
Mile 5: 7:40. Thank you.
Mile 6: 7:37. Brilliant.
Mile 7: 7:39. I’ll take it.
Mile 8: 7:34. A little overexuberant, but acceptable.
Mile 9: 7:32. Dude, come on.
Mile 10: 7:49. A little erratic now. Maybe compensating for the sins of the past couple of miles though I don’t remember for sure.
Mile 11: 7:27. Compensating for the preceding. Definitely too erratic now.
Mile 12: 7:57. I saw an open Porta-Potty and decided to go for it though my need was not urgent. It just looked like a good opportunity. But it took numerous seconds.
Mile 13: 7:15. Again, the mistake of trying to reclaim lost time in one shot.
Mile 14: 7:29. Trying to ease up.
Mile 15: 7:35. Not bad.
Mile 16: 7:19. Oops. Maybe getting a little too cocky about feeling strong at this stage.
Mile 17: 7:48 Again easing off. Soon hereafter I encounter my one-man support team among the onlookers, the incomparably charming — not to mention stupendous runner — John Parry, who gave me wonderful encouragement, running alongside me for maybe half a minute. I tell him my legs are a little beat but the engine is still strong. He says, keep running relaxed. I yell back “I love you, man!” as we part.
Mile 18: 7:50. The Newton Hills slow me down. I might also have lost a few seconds talking to John, but it was well worth it.
Mile 19: 7:26 Fighting back. Starting to fatigue.
Mile 20: 7:45. Nice to be here, realizing it will all be over before too long. Unless I melt down between here and the finish, that is.
Mile 21: 7:56. The dreaded Heartbreak Hill. It doesn’t quite break my heart but it slows me down.
Mile 22: 7:21. Again battling back.
Mile 23: 7:48. Getting smacked around. The margin of error is dwindling. Must step on the gas.
Mile 24: 7:35. I’m proud of that.
Mile 25: 8:04. Hurting. A few minutes later, rough calculation tells me I might make 3:20 but not by much. Got to pick it up.
From 25 to 26.2: An 8:00 pace. Definitely fading badly in the last two miles. Turning left on Boylston into the final stretch I give it my best effort to run like hell, my legs so thrashed it’s like a bad dream. But this final gambit gets me over the finish line at 3:19:55. Success.
I was fairly well tattered after the finish, light-headed, leg muscles locking up. But I drank plenty of fluids and managed to limp onto the subway and back to the hotel, where I decided I deserved a pint of Guinness at the bar. This is Boston after all. Then, back to the bathtub to let it all sink in.
When it’s all over you get to ride the train back to New Jersey and take a picture of yourself displaying your medal.
The Boston Marathon is a class act. The volunteers were consistently great, the crowd tremendously supportive, and the organization seemed to me just about flawless. The atmosphere is uniquely exciting. It’s a kick to be among a great mob of runners who range from quite good to quite very damn good indeed. I had some fun along the way, the pain of the last 10K notwithstanding. I enjoyed chatting with a few runners during the first 12 or 13 miles, though I am of two minds about doing that. On one hand it gets you out of your head for a bit and provides a distraction, helping you to relax and enjoy the ride. On the other hand, it’s a distraction. You might inadvertently adjust your pace to the other person’s (or vice versa) instead of running your own race. I suppose that at a more advanced level there’s no wasted breath or concentration, but I think at my more modest level of performance it can’t hurt to socialize in moderation.
I would have loved to report an elegant and disciplined marathon with a strong, crisp finish rather than a tail of sloppily fluctuating all over the place and then barely hanging on to attain the goal. This performance suffered from my characteristic problem with self-control. It isn’t a willful disregard of pace management, or a consciously arrogant decision that today I am such a superb athlete that I can run faster than planned. I just have trouble gauging pace. This being my first Boston and just my third marathon, the lack of experience might have something to do with it. I could buy one of those GPS devices that tells you how fast you’re going, but I am stubbornly old-school, and frugal. I would rather learn to control myself with a $35 Timex and feedback at the rate of once per mile.
During the slow walk back to the hotel I began thinking I could do better if I tried it again. Ever obsessed with time, I looked at my watch to see about how long after the finish it took me to start thinking in those terms. Forty minutes.
for Victor (1918-2011)
in the dead man’s closet
trying on his clothes
not bad
another letter to Bill Pascrell, D-NJ
Everyone who is not either ignorant or cynical recognizes that private health insurance must go, and be replaced by a publicly financed single-payer system such as those that exist in virtually every civilized democracy on the planet. Once again I picked up my quill and penned another missive to my Congressman and I urge you to do the same without delay.
Dear Congressman:
I write to urge you to co-sponsor and support HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All bill re-introduced by John Conyers.
Everyone knows Obama’s healthcare “reform” is coming unravelled, as was to be expected. Based on the thoroughly dysfunctional private insurance system we now have, it was doomed to fail from the start. Many people — not only the right — rightly detest the individual mandate because it compels the purchase of a defective product. It is truly a dreadful idea, and yet the Obama legislation can never be even minimally effective without it.
Meanwhile we have the likes of Scott Walker and Chris Christie doing their best to destroy the public sector, as if firefighters and librarians were to blame for the budget crises many states are suffering. One of the recurring themes in these confrontations is the cost of healthcare. How can we take this contentious healthcare issue off the table and save our society billions of dollars, while achieving superior public health outcomes at the same time?
The solution could hardly be more obvious. We have been needing a single-payer, national health insurance plan for decades, but the need has never been more desperate than it is today. Single payer has been proven to work in other countries and it will work here. The time has come to discard Obama’s ill-conceived, private-insurance-based debacle and start over. Healthcare is a human right, not a commodity. The struggle will not be easy, but that is no excuse not to do the only morally and economically sound thing: single payer, Medicare for All. One publicly financed national health insurance plan for everybody.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter.
2010, another good year
It’s interesting — and sometimes, gratifying — to look back at the previous year after the completion of another cycle through the Gregorian calendar. And I enjoy the narcissistic satisfaction of celebrating my achievements. So here’s a look at noteworthy events in 2010, from my self-centered point of view:
- I got married to my wife on May…. something (no worries, I have until May 2011 to remind myself of the exact date). That was a courageous act for both of us. Yet I can state in all honesty that I have no regrets — and I do believe she can say the same. If you think that should go without saying, think again. The hard truth is that all intimate relationships have their difficulties, and why shouldn’t they? People are imperfect. How could their relationships with one another be otherwise? In a recent conversation with my beloved wife, we concluded that a good marriage is in a sense comparable to raising children: it makes your life harder, but better. (Whereas a shitty marriage simply makes your life harder.)
Don’t feel bad if you weren’t invited to the ceremony — almost nobody was. We had the obligatory two witnesses, an officiant, one witness’ spouse as photographer, and our kids. We stood barefooted in our back yard and the whole thing was over within three minutes.
- I let go of my formal Zen practice for the time being, withdrawing from the zendo at which I had been a student for three plus years. The reasons are somewhat complex. Suffice it to say was time to move on. I might have liked to join some other zendo, be part of a sangha, work with a teacher. But I had to accept the fact that I while I may have a pretty good shot at doing most of what I want to do sequentially, I can’t have everything I want all at the same time because there simply isn’t enough time. Raising kids, having a substantial commute, being married, and maintaining a committed running practice — that’s about all I can handle. I sit as much as I can when I can, generally at least 15 minutes every day save a very few days per year. I sit longer when I can.
- Speaking of running, I ran no marathon in 2010, but nailed personal records in shorter distances, such as
- a 10K race in March that I jumped into spontaneously — i.e., without training for it explicitly — and surprised myself with a 6:55/mile pace, 5th in my 50-54 age group. I didn’t think I could run it at a sub- 7:00/mile pace; my previous best had been 7:18. This meant it was time to raise the bar.
- the Brooklyn Half Marathon in May, where I was aiming for a 7:25 pace and ran at a 7:22 average pace. That was good for 17th of 169 in my age group, which might not sound stellar except that this popular race draws a pretty strong field. Not the least satisfying aspect was that it felt like I was pressing to maintain a quality pace the whole way and was actually concentrating on what I was doing for almost the entire 1:36:35. I probably could have done better if I had trained with a coach and run more strategically — but rare is the race in which you cannot say you might have done better if this or that.
- a 5K race in August on Martha’s Vineyard with over 1500 runners, at which your servant finished 5th in his age group at a 6:39/mile pace. Not two weeks before I had run another 5K in hot and humid conditions and had gone out too fast, finishing at a 6:52 pace — which happened to be good enough for 2nd in my age group, but I went out too fast and struggled later. This one was pleasing because I kept up a reasonably even pace the whole way and did better. My wife also ran it just for the pleasure of running.
- a five mile New York Road Runners race in November, an event in Central Park with over 2000 runners. My 6:46 pace was good for 4th place in my age group. It’s exciting to come this close to actually being given some sort of award.
This bragging may be unseemly. All the ass-kicking runners I know around town are genuinely modest. But I am still getting over my astonishment at the sudden and unexpected gift of being able to run this well, because I never knew what it was to attach a timing chip to a shoe, pin a number to my shirt, and run seriously until three years ago. I am a kid who is thrilled with his cool new toy.
- We acquired two more cats.
- Our daughter Mylie got two guinea pigs whom she named Calvin and Hobbes.
- Speaking of kids, all four of ours got a year older, got bigger, moved up a grade in school, kept on inhaling and exhaling, kept us on our toes — and for this we are boundlessly grateful.
U.S. politics as professional wrestling
One time many years ago I bought a T-shirt that depicted a donkey and an elephant doing battle inside a wrestling ring in typical pro wrestling style: extravagant, flamboyant, over the top. The caption read something like “US Government Wrestling Federation: It’s All Fake.”
Sagacious commentators like Gore Vidal and many others have been telling us for years that our political system is dominated by a duopoly which is really two wings of one Business Party, one of them slightly more moderate than the other, but both fundamentally subservient to the oligarchy. I think you would have to be either seriously deluded or disingenuous to disagree.
During the fake health care reform debate of 2009, Anthony Weiner remarked that Democrats show up at a knife fight carrying library books. And traditional, gullible liberals often lament that their leaders aren’t mean and ruthless enough to go up against the evil Republican opposition. I think Anthony’s remark is profoundly insightful, perhaps even more so than he intended. Assume it’s true: Obama carries an armload of library books as he goes up against his vicious knife-wielding foes. Why? Why on earth would you do such a thing… unless… he doesn’t really mean to win. Oh dear me, it’s all fake!
I am reminded of the pro wrestling analogy as I watch the Obama administration pretend to care about the interests of ordinary people.
Here he comes, approaching the ring: Barack “Mister Main Street” Obama, wearing his coveralls and hardhat, carrying his lunch pail. He is lucky enough to be employed, it seems. Before entering the ring he punches his timecard on a clock installed outside his corner by the promoters, and the crowd goes wild — their hero, a working man!
And now, here comes The Republican, in full evening wear. Cigar in hand, pocket watch on a gold chain, he steps into the ring, removes his top hat and hands it to his valet. Mostly jeers and boos come from the crowd but you can hear he has his supporters as well: those who like to imagine that their own interests coincide with those of The Republican. Now he pulls out a wad of cash and starts counting, driving his enemies in the crowd into a screaming rage. He jeers at the rabble, finally hands his cigar to his valet and gets ready to rumble.
The action begins, the Republican and Mister Main Street pound the shit out of each other for several minutes. Oh, the drama! Oh, the entertainment! How diverting! Finally the Republican beats Main Street senseless and wins the match once again. Tax cuts for the rich, billions for criminal wars of imperialist expansion, austerity for the rest of us.