October 28, 2009, journal entry

Four miles.

I awake at 4:30AM today for my run and am not convinced I am a morning person. I am so tired my stomach hurts, and all I want to do is to close my eyes instead of facing the blast of cold that will surely greet me when I walk out the front door. I remind myself that in all the years I have been running, right- AND left-brained, I can count on one hand the runs I regret.

I lace up.

DAMN, it’s cold. Probably 25 degrees, but, in complete contrast to last week’s run when the dark was completely shrouded in black and grey fog, today’s dark is lit with the stars of a clear night. In fact, it feels quite bright. I look up, amazed at the brilliance. I can clearly see my path.

I pick up my pace because it is STILL dark and cold, but I remind myself to pay attention to the path before my feet so I don’t trip and fall with my gaze looking upward. The moon is waxing gibbous, and the stars in the navy blue sky clump together like orange winter berries on an Autumn winter tree. I easily pick out the seven stars of the Big Dipper, which form a part of the constellation Ursa Major, and connect the dots as though drawing with chalk in a child’s coloring book, and the Little Dipper, also with seven stars, of the Ursa Minor constellation. Ursa Major and Minor, the Great Bear and the Little Bear, make me want to search my bookshelf for the Little Bear books by Else Homelund Minarik and Maurice Sendak that I saved from my own childhood. I love Little Bear’s imagination which has him flying to the moon in his new space helmet made from an empty cereal box and no feathers, and his wishes have him sitting on a cloud, flying all about.

The brightest star I see I believe is Venus. For some reason, I remember that Mars shines bright at night while Venus is the morning star. Nonetheless, even with the dippers and Lyra and all the stars of Ursa Major, I feel no limitation in my ignorance of the constellations because of my own imagination and my posture to be present in each and every moment. I draw lines that create sunflowers and the shapes of gathered raindrops and candies knowing I will later consult my pocket The Night Sky Guide, with the plans of finding a more in-depth field guide book on the stars.

This is not a run I regret.

My alarm is once again set for 4:30 tomorrow morning with a wind chime as my BlackBerry ring, and I remind myself that in all the years I have been running, right- AND left-brained, I can count on one hand the runs I regret.

And even if I only make it 30 minutes, the air costumed in cold ALWAYS clears my mind.

~~~

Poem
(Mary Oliver)

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body’s world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is—

so it enters us—
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights of the deep and wondrous
drowning of the body
like a star.

(from Dream Work, Poems)

GL, 10/28/2009. Prevail.