Something Wicked This Way Comes

Like everywhere east of the Rockies this summer, rain has been the name of the game in North Carolina. Considering we've been in a drought for the past several years, a summer like this is to be expected.

Friday, it stormed during dinner in Raleigh, kindly broke up while walking to another location for a glass of wine but then opened up again on the way back to the car.

Saturday, in Wilmington, the rain held off, but left us sticky, confused about the time of day, and happy to find small reprieves.

This space (above and below) is called The Atrium and was a fun find. 

And this? Oh, this is just my (dream) house.

I went out for a long (ha!) run this morning. My goal was two miles. I completed said two miles, but, as before, by a mile and a half in, my right knee began complaining and its protesting got louder with each passing tenth of a mile. 

I think I have a problem.

I keep reminding myself about how grateful I have been and should still be for going so long without an injury. That I am not (as I have long known) invincible. 

But my fear is like the clouds plaguing my sunny Carolina - all pervasive, looming, and ominous. 

But ignoring the clouds doesn't stop the rain, does it?

Lessons in Surprise

Today, I tested my knee.

Today, I set out under tumultuous skies and promised myself that the moment my knee started to give me challenges, I would stop and walk.

Today, that moment came at mile 1.5

And shortly after that moment, came the rain.

I'm not talking about a drizzle. I'm talking about a downpour. Not one minute after I stopped running.

Really?

It started as a gentle pitter-patter, but in the distance I heard the encroaching roar of a deluge. The sound of thousands of fat raindrops sluicing through trees.

As a perennial procrastinator, I often struggle with discipline. Distance running has certainly increased my capacity for it, but I'm still the "Oh-sure-I'll-have-another-beer-and-another-slice-of-pizza" gal or the "I'll-just-read-one-more-chapter-before-I-start-that-task" lady. 

As the first drops hit my head, I thought to myself, If I start running, I'll be home in four minutes. My shoes (new, mind you) won't get too wet. 

But the other voice, the voice that has been trying to protect my knee, warned Your knee can't handle it. You will regret it. 

In the minute it took for this exchange to take place, I was soaked.

I lifted my hands up, tilted my head back, laughed aloud, and enjoyed the sound of the rain in the trees.

Of course, the moment I made it home - literally, as I was standing on the front porch, peeling my sopping socks from my feet and wringing them out - the rain stopped, the setting sun lighting the sky. 

Lesson learned: sometimes, no matter what may crop up, hold fast to the plan, don't lose sight of the vision, and trust.

And, enjoy the sudden rainstorm.

PS Yes, I have not yet been to see an official member of the medical profession regarding this knee challenge. I have embarked upon an intimate relationship with my foam roller. Knots, knots, and more knots seem to be plaguing my IT bands and tightness in my hamstrings doesn't help matters. I'm giving myself one more week. 

Hope

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

(Yesterday I finally watched the movie based on Yann Martel's book. The book challenges you with its first hundred pages. But once you cross that threshold, you're in for the long haul. The movie is a beautiful thing to behold. Watch it, enjoy it.)

Yesterday, after supper, after watching Life of Pi, I headed out for a walk. Had I not dressed for said walk three hours prior, there is a strong possibility I would not have made it out the door. But there I was, in my shirt and shorts, my shoes and socks waiting by the door. So I went.

Eastern NC missed out on most of Sunday's Super Moon due to substantial cloud cover. But last night, too, the moon hung heavy and golden and low. A fat, juicy grape of a moon, glowing behind a curtain of clouds.

Once again, heading out the door just before 10 o'clock, I was reminded of my first forays into running nearly a decade and a half ago. Last night was much like that first summer, when I was sixteen. I was alone in a quiet neighborhood. The darkness so thick with humidity the sweat begins immediately and you feel like you're breathing through a moist cotton mask.

Make no mistake: I do love to walk. I love to walk until I'm bone tired and my feet pulse and my head is a pleasant fog of everything I've just seen while walking, drunk a little bit on all of the fresh air. But.

I do not like walking when I'd rather be running.

Last night I forced myself to walk. A mile. A mile and a quarter. But then, because my knee seemed to be holding up and I had just turned onto a straightaway...I ran.

I told myself as soon as another mile clicked over I would stop. And, surprisingly, when my watch beeped, I did. The knee was painfree, but it felt foreign. The hope nestled deep in my chest, like a small swallow beating against my rib cage, told me, Heed the strangeness. Tread carefully.

And for once, I listened.

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Today, more storms in the sandflats. In the early afternoon, I ran some errands. On the way back to work, a pop-up storm appeared. Summer storms have a specific smell to them in hot humid climates like Eastern NC, like the Midwestern town I call my hometown. I took this, writing:

More rain. The kind that lifts the warm dusty dirt from the pavement and floods your nose with the scent of baked earth. The kind where you sit in your car a moment longer, listening to the radio, and watch the raindrops bounce off the hood just because.

A pop-up storm like this is a reprieve from the heat. A reminder that so much of this life is cycles. That injury, when tended properly, often yields to health. That a sweet summer rain will blast away the stale barren earth.

That delving into the darkness often illuminates the light.

Storms

It gives me a ridiculous amount of pleasure when I log into my Gmail account and I get to see this graphic.

Storms are filtering their away across NC right now. It's been a blustery season.

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that has nothing to do with you, This storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Stay Out of the Way

This post begins where we all began, really.

The beach. 

This post also features something that was found on a beach. Though a beach very far from here.

This pendant features a piece of sea glass that was collected from Golden Gardens and, as it's creator described, "smoothed by the spirited, salted waters of the Puget Sound."

This pendant was a gift from a kindred soul, a lady after my own heart, Melina. Several months ago, a post she wrote moved me to donate to her cause - being a brave soul making her way in the world as a professional freelance writer and blogger. I've spent countless hours reading her posts, laughing aloud and aching alongside her.

In much the same way, last Thursday's commute home found me hoping that her note would arrive and then profoundly moved when the universe saw fit to grant my wish.

Stay out of the way, she wrote. A little more trust, patience and curiosity will do me/you a world of good. No more trying to predict and control and demand answers out of uncertainty.

It's rather beautifully simple, really. But then again, the hardest and the wisest things often are.

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My knee had continued to frustrate and confound me this week. I hadn't run since last Friday and I'd been aching to get back to it. The symptoms have been freakishly consistent, but the pain comes and goes. Yesterday I submitted to the Alex's well-trained fingers. We unearthed more knots than I can count. Today, pressing on one in the middle of my IT band I felt the pain shoot down my thigh and radiate in my knee. Feeling that, I am now hopeful that with some further sports massages perhaps I can put this madness behind me and get back to my miles.

Healing can be so maddening. But I am trying to stay out of the way and allow my body to tell me what's the right next step.

Since Thursday, I find myself reaching for my little piece of sea glass from the Great Pacific Northwest frequently. It's funny how quickly it's become a touchstone. A reminder of the power of tide.

And time.

Home.

Hold on, to me as we go
As we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave is stringing us along
Just know you're not alone
Cause I'm going to make this place your home

Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you're not alone
Cause I'm going to make this place your home

Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you're not alone
Cause I'm going to make this place your home

Bluebird

So long now I've been out
In the rain and snow
But winter's come and gone
A little bird told me so
-Gillian Welch, "Winter's Come and Gone"




It's a beautiful, sun-dappled Sunday in eastern North Carolina. The wind is thick in the trees, the sky endlessly blue. The middle of June, we have yet to experience a truly insane week of heat and for this I am thankful.

I know my silence has been long and my writing infrequent. I am in the midst of the ending of a huge transition in my life and largely contemplative.

I've long loved this song, but it has particular resonance for me this season. I've written before about birds on this blog, about woodpeckers and goldfinches, bluebirds and indigo buntings. Yesterday, driving down to the coast, I heard this song and some things clicked into place.

Last week I went to Chicago, to visit my sister Emily. A visit that was long overdue. I had never been to the great city by the lake to see her specifically.

I arrived on Friday evening on schedule, despite Tropical Storm Andrea's blustering. We caught up over a pasta dinner and a wonderful bottle of red wine. Bleary-eyed, we went to bed late and, habitually, woke early. We run along a section of the Prairie Path under bluebird skies. My muscles and heart felt great; my knee did not. We walked the last mile, me peg-leggedly nursing my right knee. Emily consoled me with stories of her own knee challenges. While my hair dried, I sat on her balcony in the mid-morning sunshine and watched a flit of blue dash between the trees, a bluebird ducking in and out of the newly full foliage. Then we headed from her suburban apartment to the city.

Ah, Chicago.

I could not have asked for a better weekend. I am all too well-acquainted with its brutal weather patterns; summer in Chicago, though, is something magical to witness. Everyone - and I mean, everyone - wants to go outside. Walking, running, biking; sunning, playing volleyball, swimming; dining al fresco, browsing stores, supporting a local art festival. The high rises and brownstones alike turn out their residents. Everyone is ridiculously giddy on sunshine and wind.

And at mid-70s, no humidity, and a light breeze, this particular Saturday was the type of day that could lure anyone to want to live there. Enough to almost make people forget about six month long winters and brutal gales.

We lunched in Lake View and from there wandered south. We walked without care, heading towards the Old Town Arts Festival on Wells. I snapped pictures like a tourist, enjoying all that hadn't changed and delighting in all that had.

That night we dined at Bluebird, enjoying some great beer and summery fare.

The next morning, we headed to a Level 1 vinyasa class in a 85 degree room. The instructor was brilliant and her meditation was sweet.

Last weekend I watched a mother robin and her baby bird yammering away at each other on my fence. Suddenly, the baby bird fell from the fence, opened its wings and flew across the yard to the tree. May we all be like baby birds today, not afraid to fall.

We practiced crow, pigeon, bird of paradise. Small versions of these bird poses, guided there with well-thought out direction.

So many birds to see, to hear. What is it about a bluebird? What is it about the color blue in general? The sky, the ocean, a sapphire; a plump blueberry, a hyacinth, an indigo bunting.

Melina has even written about how blue sea glass is good luck, because it's so rare.

Rare like a perfect summer day in Chicago, under bluebird skies.