Chasing the flame.

The thing about running is that it is so accessible, so primal, so essential.
When you run you inspire others and when they run they inspire more.
That is how we run - inspired, calm, with grace.

I checked over my Manitoba Marathon registration form today after I got back from a twenty-mile sweatfest to Charleswood and back. To be honest, I wasn't a hundred percent sure I had actually registered and needed to double check. 

My favourite question on the reg form is "Why are you running?"

I've run the race twice before. I don't remember what I wrote the first time but two years ago I put down a slogan that I'd seen on a sign from a marathon that had been run in the southern states by a friend of mine that summer. I don't recall where, but it had been a place that been having trouble with some serious tornadoes that year, and the sign read, "Because tornadoes are for pussies." So that was my reason for running that year.

The question is a good one. Why run? Why train and put yourself through twenty-six miles of pavement? The Manitoba Marathon is always on Fathers Day so I imagine a lot of people respond that they're running for their dad. Or they're raising funds for cancer research. Or just because they can.

These lengthy foot races, I'd say anything the equivalent of a half marathon or longer, require a mental game that zeroes in on patience, perseverance, grace, and, I would say, love. If you're spending over three hours out there, running, just running, it's impossible not to have your mind wander. I know I've continually had zen-like experiences on long runs, most intensely when I found myself scaling mountains in the Rockies two summers ago on a 24-hour, 125 kilometre beast of an ultramarathon. The physical exertion, I think, allows you to just focus on moving forward, sweating out pettiness and inconsequential worries, and gives you a headspace where you can hash out your life. Where are you going? Well, you're going to finish line. But you can visualize where you're off to after that as well. 

The running circle, I have to say, I have yet to infiltrate. I'm a runner, sure, but beyond the friendly nod to other runners on Wellington Crescent, I'm not really part of that group. But it doesn't matter, because on marathon day, it's all inclusive. We all belong there, as runners, volunteers, and cheerers-on. It's a day of accomplishments and friends.

Imagine, though, on race day, how many people are finding their zen place somewhere between mile ten and twenty-five, accessing the recess in their brain where they can just let go and giver' shit. Imagine how many of those people are putting pieces of their lives together, coming to revelations about decisions and mistakes they've made, things that have happened to them, good and bad. Maybe that's part of the reason why marathon days are such good days. That many people feeling at peace at one time can only be a force for good.

This is also, perhaps, why the Boston bombings this year carried such a hefty sting to them. And also why the stories you heard coming out of the smoke and debris at the finish were stories of courage and bravery and love.

This year, for whatever reason, I wrote down that my reason for running was, "Chasing the flame." I don't know what I was thinking several months ago when I registered, but as far I'm concerned now, that's as good a reason as any for hacking out a marathon.

To all the others chasing the flame next weekend, I wish you all the best. Let us run together, love together. 

Cannonballs, softly.

The year two-thousand and twelve was a year for excavation. Digging holes only to crawl back out covered in soot and mess and shit. Drilling deep and fracking the fuck out of some emotional ground. Somewhere down there we found oil and gold and a tangle of roots we forgot we put down.

It was a year that ate us up and spit us out, crushed and cowering. It affected all of us in one way or another, brought us together, divided us, left us conquering mountains and crying into our pillows. It was open season for episodes of staggering loss.

You see, last year was a year of flux. Early on I lost my dad to mental illness. Woke up on Sunday a morning and he was just hanging there, you know? What the fuck do you do. Call the ambulance.

I'm sorry to say your father is deceased, they say.

Firemen, policemen, emergency folks and investigating folks taking up the front lawn, the backyard, the kitchen.

Walk down the street to get away. Some neighbor I've never met asks what's up. I explain.

Oh, she says, How'd he do it? 

I don't think that's all that important right now, I say.

Make the other phone calls, the mom, the sister, the aunts, the uncles, the coworkers.

Yeah, he won't be coming into work tomorrow.

Mix a drink. Sit. Make some more calls. Drive around. Mix another. Funeral, ceremony, family, friends. Mix another. Fuck.

That day has haunted me every day since and will continue to haunt imperviously, imperially.

Then, somehow, we graduated university. A whole lot of us. Just spilled out of that undergraduate vagina like we were never even hiding in there, bachelor's placenta splashing all over Portage Avenue. So that's done, the last four, five, seven years of our lives. All that stress and fun and purpose all of a sudden purposeless. We were so smart and witty and informed and now we still are, kind of, but more broke and with less confidence.

What a crushing experience.

So we searched for purpose in other places and that searching stretched us across provinces and continents and further than some friendship sinews could hold. People moved on. But at least we had a couple a good parties before that happened.

For me, this meant fucking off to the bush again, this time to build. It also meant separating myself from those of us who stuck around Winnipeg. I still see them every month, or two months, or three. We still get along but a lot them have started moving. Me, I'm building. You can't really build and move at the same time.

Somewhere in there my childhood home was sold and we moved. Between working 80 hour weeks in the wilderness I spent 80 hour weeks in city packing and moving the lives of myself, my sister, my mother and my dead father. Goodbye, Kingsford Avenue. I tend to avoid you now even if I still accidentally write your postal code down on every form I fill out.

Then there was Lo Pub. As if graduating wasn't enough of a primer for a quarter-life crisis, the sudden closure of our favourite saloon left a gaping hole in our collective livers. Lo Pub was more than a pub or a bar, although it was those things and did those things very well. That place was a comfort zone. It was as if you were hanging out in Jack's basement, lounging, drinking, shootin' the shit and pondering your post-graduate prospects.

And then! - I'm pointing at your face - Then, once it got dark enough, a hundred more people would show up and some of those people would move instruments into the basement and play a fucking rock show. Some nights you knew fifty of those hundred people. And some nights you fell in love with the girl across the room. And it all just felt . . . normal and safe.

So that was gone and the summer blasted us with heat and rye and hard work. For me, construction continued out in the bush and everybody else kept moving around elsewhere in circles and straight lines, in patterns and straight off the map to float. Some of us shot apples off the heads of our loved ones while others caught bullets in their teeth, grinning with adrenaline and a growing sense that maybe next time the bullet trick wouldn't work out so well.

Gunshot wounds notwithstanding, all summers come to an end. Without course schedules to coordinate, student groups to run and syllabuses to ignore, the fall had a tense strangeness to it. Something was out of place and the depth of our meaning was tested. We carried on.

Winter came like a hammer, tightening its noose around our flailing lives. Was this going to be it? Would we perish now, underachieved and stagnant?

As the piles of snow grew around us, covering all the best parts of our summer, we suffered another loss. A great friend, an animal prophet, a guardian. There was word that he wasn't doing well and then one day he, too, was gone. So we burned his couch in remembrance, got drunk in an igloo and played songs by the bands that used to play at Lo.

And all the while, simmering in the background, a Harper government was engaged in a piece-work project of destruction with the sole purpose of dismantling the only parts of our country that we held close to our hearts - and offered us any potential employment opportunities.

As if that wasn't enough, the great Canadian opiate of professional hockey also gave up on us for half a season. We weren't even allowed to be distracted.

Christmas was a brick tied to the ankle of a swimmer treading water. Winter dragged on much longer than it should have, whispering at us from beneath hospital sheets, refusing to perish. With nothing else to do, it allowed for time to think and think seriously.

We needed summer to come so hard, that much was clear. The previous twelve months had left us destroyed, humbled, led astray, disbanded and disavowed. Agents suddenly stripped of duty and shoved out into the cold.

We know that we can do better. We've just been stuck somehow, debilitated by the realities that had maybe been previously buried by classroom romance.

How'd he do it? 

I don't think that's all that important right now.

Now that summer is finally upon us, what are we going to do with it? How do we repair a wooden ship that's been splintered by so many of life's cannonballs? Seaworthiness is the goal, the ocean the dream, the waves the medium.

It's time to come in from the cold and get out on the warm water. Winter is dead and so are some of our dreams and some our friends. But with the dead comes the new and with new comes opportunity for exploration, growth, adventure, love.

So let's go. Let's get going. Let's build and let's move, softly, with a little more knowledge, a little more pain swallowed, shoulders heavy but steadfast and stronger than before.

Let us.

Deciduous down.

Brittle bark saw cut snap

Timbers creak under our weight

Deciduous down.

Stripped and varnish shipped

Testament humanity

Stars reflect vanity.

Build brightly.

All kinds of strangers

With all kinds of dangerous

Maps on their faces.

Cigarette eyes red

Burning hearts on tattered sleeves

Working hard on love.

Beard, callous and tattoo

Hammer pouch rattles heavy

Build on, build brightly.

Still North Baby

Winter hangs on still

Melt breathes from beneath dark ice

Gasping for sunlight.

Two weeks in, two more

Burdened shoulders come and go

Still North, baby, still.