A Word of Resolution for 2015

“For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.” ― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

I admire the notion of wiping the slate clean for the year to come, particularly at a time when the cold, dark hours are just beginning their slow creep toward the light. But it doesn't really work that way, does it? Chances are, regardless of our resolve, we will wake on February 1 still in these same bodies in need of more exercise and less sugar; in these brains in need of more fresh thought and less group-think; in these hearts in need of more gratitude and less comparison.

I'm not immune to the My Year in Review tradition, but I find as I age that it's less harrowing to keep rolling through the process of life, rather than marking an end to another year. I already have my birthday to thank for that time of mourning. Serendipitously, my birthday comes at the beginning of autumn, which is a far more natural time for me to renew and reflect, to make resolutions (intentions toward permanent change) or establish goals (markers toward a specific achievement).

Yet on January 1, 2015, I came upon this essay by Molly Fisk Pick a Word for the Year. Being a logophile, the idea of selecting a word to guide me through the year, instead of making a resolution, made me clap my hands in delight. Yes! This is a ritual I can embrace!

This is my word. Isn't it beautiful? Greek. It's a whisper that tickles the ear, a cirrus cloud that skims across a blue sky: Sɑːr-moʊ-'lɪ-pi.

From the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I found this description most meaningful: ‘Charmolypi evokes a metaphysical reflection, expressed through the language of the body’ (Dziennik Teatralny). Loosely translated, charmolypi means ‘joyful sorrow’.'

Charmolypi belongs to a tiny family of words I adore, including Hiraeth, Saudade, Sehnsucht and Natsukashii, that contains sentiments of bittersweet longing, a yin-yang of joy and sorrow. It is a feeling that comes only when we allow ourselves to feel deeply, profoundly, painfully, wholly. The yearning is not for a specific place, person, or thing—it is the unnameable ache when you hear a particular piece of music, when the light slants a certain way, when a scent or taste catches you unawares and sends you reeling back into memory.

What Charmolypi signifies to me, why I've chosen it as the word to guide me this year, is the acceptance of sorrow as it mingles with joy. I have come to accept the inevitability of depression and anxiety in my life and rather than fight against that tide, I am learning to swim with it, to recognize the beauty that comes with the still, dark moments. These are the time when I listen most deeply, not only to myself, but to the world around me; when I touch the most compassionate parts of my soul and emerge with a stronger, bigger heart.

In harmony with 'the language of the body,' Charmolypi is embracing this body as it ages, learning to treat its limitations with respect while still pushing it to greater heights. I've been craving the power and playfulness that seem to fall by the wayside as the years pass. I've kept up a yoga self-practice for years, but since returning to formal classes a few weeks ago, I am again witnessing the transformation of my body and mind. It is with Charmolypi that I turn away from training for a marathon, which is only a date on the calendar, a short-lived event, but represents the pounding stress of increased mileage and intensity that this body doesn't need. Instead, I turn toward a practice that builds up what aging naturally whittles away: strength and flexibility and balance. I embrace the grace that comes with intention and breath.

Charmolypi is the bittersweet process of letting go. It is my determination not to expend emotional energy on those who cannot respond in kind; of finding that sometimes-wobbly balance between compassion and patience and the sweet relief of release; of accepting that forgiveness does not mean I need open the door to unhealthy people.

It is the understanding and acceptance that as I walk on the path to publication, my time and my words will not always belong to me, that as much as I am lifted up by the support of others, there is also a surrender. I am acutely aware of this now, in the thick of the editing process, when I see my vision, my story, reflected in others' eyes. I prepare myself for the day when it is released and belongs to anyone who reads it. There is Charmolypi—joy mixed with regret mixed with hope mixed with resolve.

'Last year's words belong to last year's language,' T.S. Eliot reminds us. Which words await your voice in 2015?

Fault Lines

Last week, a writer friend 'fessed to our online group that this birthday, her 45th, had her feeling blue. She lamented landing smack in middle age in a culture that turns up its nose at gray hair, wrinkles, and sagging flesh. She felt old and unwanted, washed up.  

Hey now. Hang on just a cotton-pickin' minute. I'M turning 45 in less than a month. It hadn't occurred to me to feel washed up and unwanted. I poised my fingers over the keyboard, ready to tap out a cheery response about how liberating the 40s are, how it's up to us to reclaim our bodies and redefine what's beautiful and sexy and blah blah blah. But I held off. She wasn't in the mood for chipper. She needed a hug, some chocolate cake, a hot bath and a good cry. Forty-five is sort of the tipping point, isn't it? Most of the big, fun, memorable stuff has happened. Your youth and beauty began to dim around the first season of Mad Men. Now the Big Slide begins. Forty-five is (at least) halfway to dead.

I dunno. I might have to get all chipper on your ass with a WOO HOO! I'm 45 and fabulous! Not that this decade started out bright and shiny. In the months leading up to my 40th birthday, it seemed my body was staging a coup against me. Surgery for a softball-sized tumor on an ovary (benign, TG), followed weeks later by my first pregnancy, followed months later by our first child loss. Additional surgeries in subsequent years, anemia, another pregnancy, another loss, depression, anxiety, and the most vexing to my vanity—the dual indignities of gray hair and acne—along with the most troubling to my heart—the pooch of a belly that has held children my arms never will.

But I kept my head down and kept going. Kept running up hills and folding into Downward Dog. I ate kale, I wore sunscreen. I'm cresting the hill and seeing 50 on the horizon. And I feel fine. Twenty-five years ago, you couldn't have paid me to run half a mile. This morning, nine easy. Yes, okay, the right knee got a little gimpy on the downhills, not sure what's up with that, but I felt joy. Pure, ageless, joy. It occurred to me as I read my friend's words that I must have landed, at some point in these past five years—after a lifetime rueing my lumpy features and freckles, wishing I could find some way to part with my mother's wide hips and her broad backside and add the height denied me by the family gene pool—on the make peace side of the physical me.

I live in the county with the state's oldest median population and our city average is even older: approaching 60. I swim at the YMCA a couple of times a week and my lap lane partners smoke me. Men and women in their 60s, 70s, 80s, eating my lunch with their smooth strokes. The women's aging bodies, on full display in the locker room with all their lumps and stretched out tattoos, their surgical scars, their scalps showing pink through their cotton-white hair, fill me with awe. They are so beautiful. They are so alive. They giggle and sing, they talk about their house renovations, grandkids, and trips to Vienna. When I grow up, I want to be just like them.

There's a hollow place in me where all the terror of getting old and dying goes. The fear that cancer-m.s.-alzheimer's-stroke-insert-irrational-health-scare-here lurks just a step into my future, or that I will end up homeless and alone, or that existentially, my life has little value—those Wide Awake at 3 a.m. Worries—(although, since I started ingesting a teaspoon of hops/valerian tincture before bed, my peri-menopausal night sweats are gone and I sleep soundly most nights, insomnia is rare. Seriously, women, this stuff is amazing) plague me.

But in the bright light of day, I feel beautiful and strong. Perversely, there's a bit of pushback from the sisterhood—a sense that it's one thing for a middle-aged woman to make peace with her flaws, but another entirely for her to be proud of her skin and the flesh underneath, or that somehow it's an easier road for some (a woman informed me last year that my shape came from the fact I hadn't given birth). It's a reminder that this nebulous "society" we vitiate for not accepting us the way we are is, in fact, the very us we see in the mirror. 

Another friend celebrated a birthday this week, too—she's just north of 50—and she articulated more of what's in my heart as I approach this half-life age: a melancholy, not about a changing, aging body, but about those missed or messed up opportunities, the might-have-beens, the what-ifs, the if-onlys.

It is the making peace with the regrets that, along with eliminating processed foods, eschewing sugar, and pounding out the trail runs, I am counting on to ease me into the next half of this life with grace and dignity. It's a daily struggle.

Letting go is the hardest workout of all.

“If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present…gratefully.” -Maya Angelou

“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.” William Saroyan

An Enchanted Life

An enchanted life has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed with beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place, or a person. ~ H.L. Mencken  

Oh great, here comes AFPGO: Another Fucking Personal Growth Opportunity. ~ Unknown

About a mile into a run last week, I stopped. Just stopped. I couldn't. There are times when my body needs a break from running and I try to listen. I try not to judge. I walked home with tightness in my chest and heaviness in my limbs. I thought, "I'll just swim laps at nine." Nine came and I lowered myself into a hot bath. That was the water I needed, water like the warmth of the womb. I needed to be comforted, not challenged. I needed to soak, before I sank. I was utterly overwhelmed.

The slow creep of mud that finally reached my mental shoes, stopping me in my tracks—this weird blend of acedia and agitation—wasn't a surprise; I'd felt it coming. It started, perhaps, a couple of weeks ago, when I found myself in the midst of a tremendous online chorus of writers, some of whom are my literary heroes. I was amazed and delighted to have been included in their ranks. Their voices swelled and rose in a mighty roar of energy and affirmation that took my breath away. I found my way through the crowd to quieter corners and rooms down the hall, making personal connections with a few voices that reached me with calm clarity, but I couldn't shake the feeling that somehow I didn't belong there, that these writers, these thousands, were accomplished and ambitious in ways that are completely foreign to me, perched as I am on this almost-island, in my quiet sunroom, spinning my modest tales that no one would mistake for great literature or groundbreaking creative non-fiction.

Time to retreat. I stopped reading the bios that made me feel so woefully inadequate, I withdrew from conversations that sped past faster than I could read or type, reminding myself that time spent wishing I was more, did more, risked more, reaped more, was time spent not doing the one thing that mattered most: writing.

I returned to my keyboard and to my mind, wrote a flash fiction piece, finished the first draft of short story, and began researching literary journals to submit each. I did yoga on the beach, I hiked, I walked. I read a volume of beautiful poetry. I filled two boxes for Goodwill, because when I get like this, I want to lighten all my burdens, I want to clean out, get rid of, eliminate, discard, set myself free.

But still the disquiet remained. A torpor dulled my sense of possibility and joy, sitting heavy in my core, while anxiety beat a woodpecker's refrain against my heart. I knew I hadn't gone far enough in seeking the peace that would guide me to back into the light.

When the interwebs cease to be a source of information, of playfulness, of social release and friendship, I know that something is happening inside of me that bears watching. I know it's time to be careful, that the world is about to swallow me with noise. When I agitate instead of participate, it's time to shut it all down and walk away.

When I begin to despair that my writing doesn't stack up and that my future will never brush the dizzying heights of those in my online communities, it's time to recommit myself to the page.

Echoing a remark a writer friend made here recently, it's possible to read too much about and into the writing and publishing process. It's possible to fill your mind with so much advice on craft, so many dos and dont's of seeking publication, that you get mired down and find yourself unable to move forward.

It's possible to let the world get too loud.

I shared a draft of my query letter on a limited-public board last week, seeking critiques from fellow writers. One commented that my query was too perfect, too textbook. I'd felt the same, so the comment didn't sting, it confirmed. It came as a relief. I was right. In trying so hard to adhere to all the pro tips, I'd lost my voice. I rewrote it (again. again. again.) and I feel there's more of me in there, but it's not yet where it needs to be.

Until I can find my stride and run again, I'm deleting those writers' tips blog posts that get routed to my inbox. Until I feel safe in myself again, I'm staying away from the social media where I feel vulnerable.

I want to be overwhelmed with beauty. I want to be electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within. These happen only in two places for me: outside and on the page. That's where you'll find me, in case you're wondering where I've gone off to ...

7/5/14

ETA: A couple of wonderful articles have made their way into my life in the week since I first published this post. Just had to share:

The Secrets of the Creative Brain by Nancy Andreasan, for The Atlantic

Why Every Story You Write is a Guaranteed Failure by K.M. Weiland, on her eponymous blog

Timshel: The MFA Dilemma

“But the Hebrew word, timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden  

I'm wrestling with a decision. What's happened is a good thing. It's an opportunity. I'm not kvetching. I'm kveln. But it presents a dilemma, nevertheless. Ponder with me.

In December 2012, I applied to an MFA in Creative Writing program in Seattle, a process I chronicled here: The Things That Come in Threes. I didn't know we would be leaving Seattle three months later.

In March 2013, the week we moved, I received an acceptance to the program. Returning to the city in six months for a two-year MFA wasn't feasible and I had to say no. But I was invited to resubmit the same application for consideration for this academic year, so I did. You never know, right?

My present circumstances are no more logistically nor financially amenable to an MFA than they were last year, so when the second acceptance came through, the no had already formed on my lips. But the ante was upped. The admission offer included a scholarship that covers half the tuition. Kveln for sure. But what's Yiddish for, Ah Jeez. Now what do I do? 

A couple of weeks ago I spent an afternoon-evening on campus, meeting the other Fall 2014 admits, current MFA students and faculty, attending a class, and reminding myself why this seemed like such an amazing idea eighteen months ago. I walked away inspired and excited, but after the glow wore off, I was left wondering if it still is an amazing idea. Not just this program. The whole notion of an MFA in Creative Writing.

I've been a runner for about thirteen years. I was a late starter to the sport, certain I'd be lousy at it. Then in 2001, I walked a full marathon. Or set out to. I ended up running a fair bit of it, simply to be done with the damn thing. It was November, it was Seattle, it was cold and wet and dark. I lost a toenail. My thighs were tree trunks after months of tedious training. I thought, "Never again." I started running instead.

And I got into it. Process and method float my boat, so I learned how to talk fartleks and negative splits and tapers. I plan my weeks around hill repeats, tempo, and long-distance days. I track the number of miles I put into my shoes and replace them on a regular and expensive basis. I own more running bras then the regular kind. I have a watch that cost about a third of a plane ticket to Europe.

And I raced. Mostly half-marathons, several 10ks, a smattering of 5ks, a couple of triathlons. Because that's what legit runners do. Why else would you run if you weren't in training for something—had some goal goading you on?

About three years ago, the injuries set in. Every single flipping time I trained for a race, I got hurt. And I'd race anyway. I'd have to take a few weeks or months off post-race to heal, then I'd start training for another event, wreck something, race, and start the whole stupid cycle all over again. I just couldn't seem to turn off the inner competitor, the one who said, this is what runners DO. You make training plans, you study, do the work, stick with the plan, meet your goal.

I've amassed a collection of injury-recovery resources: a boot to stretch out my plantar fascia; another boot for metatarsal stress fractures; there's a stack of PT exercises for a weak psoas and over-worked hip flexors; ice packs that conform to various parts of the body; a big foam roller for fussy IT bands; a bar that looks like one half of a set of nunchucks to roll over tight calves; custom orthotics for my high arches and to compensate for a left leg that is a blink shorter than the right.

Good God, the hell I've put my body through. Why don't I just find a different sport?

Because I love to run. And most of the time over these past thirteen years, running has been incredibly good to me. I run because it's what I do.

But I think I'm through with racing. I can't seem to train without hurting myself.

Thinking about this MFA, any MFA, makes me feel like I'm staring at a marathon training plan. I want to do it so badly, my teeth hurt. I want it because I want it. I want the badge, the medal, the plaque, the 26.2 sticker on my rear bumper (hey, I should have one of those anyway!). I want the MFA to show I had the discipline and the cojones to get through training, all the way to the main event. But I don't need an MFA to be a writer. Any more than I need a marathon finisher's shirt to prove I'm an accomplished runner.

To be a runner, I need to run. Check. To be a writer, I need to write. Check. Check. To be an author, I need to publish. Check. Check. Check. To make a living at this, I need to get paid. Alas, No Check. Okay, one small check so far.

There are many important and wonderful reasons writers seek MFAs. They are the same reasons that compelled me to apply to the program, that make my heart ache to say "Yes." But for who this writer is now, none of the reasons is compelling enough to go into the kind of debt--even with a generous scholarship--that two years' tuition and living part-time in Seattle would require. None is compelling enough to pull me from the pages that I've written, to defer me from my dream and determination to see my novels published.

Last Monday, I--like thousands of runners across the country--dedicated my day's run to the Boston Marathon, to honor those killed and injured on April 15, 2013, and to support in spirit the runners setting out to fulfill a dream one year later. I intended to do my standard 5-6 miles. At some point, I decided to keep going. In the end, I ran 13.1. There was no finish line to cross, no shirt or medal to commemorate the effort, no bagels or banana or hot soup at the end. There was just my inner crazy person and my steady training to get me through a spontaneous half marathon on two cups of coffee.

I came home, propped up my weary legs, and I began to write. It was then I realized the same grit I'd used that morning to keep running was the same I've called upon to achieve my greatest dream--seeing my words reach a wider audience through publication. I've managed this far without the stamp of validation an MFA could give.

Let's see how far my legs can carry me through the ultra-marathon I started when I wrote the first words of a novel. Now that I've got two behind me, I feel I'm just getting warmed up.

Hey, thanks for helping me get this sorted.  ... Timshel. Thou Mayest. And Thou Mayest Not.

Mind the Gap

If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem. But don’t make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people’s words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient. ~Hilary Mantel  

True Confession: I'm a tad obsessive when it comes to my running mileage. If I set out to run seven miles, by God, I'm going to run seven. If the Maritime Center—my ending point—is fast approaching and my Garmin reads 6.43 miles, I'll take a left at Taylor and track and up and down each block until I close in on the magic number. Do I run past my mileage goal? Heh Heh Heh.

And so it is with my daily word count. Each writer defines their own good "butt in chair" day; I find a word count goal keeps me focused and motivated.

When I embarked upon the Novel #2 journey two weeks ago, I established the weekly goal of 10,000 words. Factor in a day for editing and research, another to work on other writing projects, and (here come my mad math skillz, look out!) that's 2000 words each day I work on the Novel. I try to crank out 3k on Sundays—the start of my writing week—to build in wiggle room for the unexpected during the week, such as last week's weird 24-hour flu bug. So far, I'm holding steady.

Sunday. Today. The start of my work week. I'd left myself notes for a new scene, had already visualized the setting, the conversation, the emotions. I planned a 3000 word day—easy-peasy. I couldn't wait to get started.

Then, I couldn't get started.

Five hours in and only a thousand words, some of those written last week and left hanging in an earlier scene. My brain, mushy after two poor nights' sleep and still throwing off that flu bug, just couldn't muster the words.

If I feel the stall during a run, I force myself to keep on. Ignoring exhaustion, soreness, boredom, I focus on the next half mile and get through it. Endorphins take over and finish the job for me.

But every so often, I'll get a couple of miles in and know today is not my day. I might take a walk break and resume the run, but if the mojo truly is gone, I reset the Garmin and find a shortcut home. As a morning runner, I can always salvage the day with an afternoon hike.

If my writing focus fades, I keep the fingers on the keyboard, give myself permission to write crap and keep moving. The story takes over, suddenly it's hours later and I'm telling myself, "You must stop at 4:00. You promised to go for walk/make soup/see a movie. Good job, Little Buddy!"

Today I couldn't pull it together.

Stop. Reset the Garmin. Find a shortcut home.

Word Count be damned. Open the gap. Create the space.

Today, I stopped scowling at the problem. I bundled up and headed out, Bach in my ears and trail shoes on my feet. I breathed.

Saturday, I set out to run 8 miles. I went to 9 because it all felt so good.

If you'd told me two weeks ago, when I typed "Chapter One," that I'd be 21,337 words into a new novel in fourteen days, well. Dude.

Find the Gap.

Between Truth and a Human Being

Fog. Days and nights of fog so thick I wonder if the artist Christo has wrapped the peninsula in cotton batting and left us to suffocate. I drive grandma speed, hunched over the steering wheel, on the lookout for deer casing neighborhood gardens during their pre-dawn perambulations. They like to appear suddenly in your headlights with that deer-in-the-headlights look. It's a hill repeat day. That's runner-speak for "run up and down hills a bunch of times like a natural-born fool." I have a few favorite hills in and around the state park north of town. Four hundred and thirty-five acres of forest, meadow and a restored 19th century military fort built on and below high bluffs overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound, bordered by two miles of seashore--it's a runner's dream.

It's just past 7 a.m. Usually there are other humans about, walking dogs or clutching travel mugs of coffee, heading for a bench on the bluff to greet the sun as it crests the Cascade Mountains. But on this morning, there is no dawn. There is only fog. The air is blue-black, thick, wet, cold. I am alone. I complete my warm-up mile around the former military parade ground and head down to the beach for my first set of repeats.

A gray ghost glides down the bluff and steps onto the road in front of me. His eyes flash gold and red, catching the pulses from my lighted wrist band. I halt in mid-stride, but my momentum nearly carries me head-over-heels downhill as my knees Jello out. I back up. Coyote watches me for a few heartbeats, then trots up the way he came. Me? I turn and run.

Back at the car, behind the safety of the open door, I search in the fog for Coyote. He stands on the edge of the bluff peering down at me, so close I could toss a pine cone and hit his brown-gray flank. I'm in awe, jolted and not a little pissed.

There goes my run. Coyote 1, Julie O.

But we're both adaptable creatures. I head back into town and run the Washington and Monroe St. hills. Ever on the lookout for the damn raccoon that snarled at me last week.

It's a jungle out there.

A few days after Coyote, I'm in a local bar with some women friends--a monthly get-together. We drink a couple of pints, talk local elections and books.

As we settle up our tabs and sort out jackets and purses, one of the women turns to me and says, "Julie, you are in such great shape. But of course, you've never had kids."

Coyote stops in mid-stride and fixes his red-gold glare on me.

God DAMN it.

There goes my run. Coyote 2; Julie 0.

You'd think at some point shit like that would stop hurting. But it doesn't.

The thing is, that statement had with no more malice than Coyote had for me, floating out of the fog and crossing my path. Said in ignorance? No, this woman knows my past, knows my pain. Said without thinking? Clearly, for there are so very many things wrong with correlating someone's physical conditioning to their experiences with childbirth. And it's one of those things you just.don't.say. to someone who has suffered infertility and miscarriage.

Yet, here I am, making excuses for thoughtless people. What am I going to do--throw pinecones at Coyote and hope he'll turn tail so I can continue down that hill without looking over my shoulder? As if.

Me? I'm the deer in the headlights. I turn and run. Straight into my own words.

A few days after the Coyote and The Bar, this e-mail landed:

Dear Julie,

We are thrilled to announce that your submission has been accepted into Three Minus One. Thank you so much for your wonderful contribution. Sean and I welcome you! 

We also ask that you spread the word widely about Three Minus One. It is a labor of love for all involved! Please feel free to share on social media any and all developments regarding the book, and create links to your own websites to presell the book once it becomes available. We will do our best to keep you all in the loop as developments happen.

Here is a link so you can share your acceptance with your friends:  Three Minus One Congratulations to Contributors 

There are approximately 75 contributors.

Again, congratulations. There were over 600 submissions and it was tough competition, so this is a huge accomplishment and we are celebrating with you!

Very best,

Brooke and Sean

Three Minus One is a book project tied to the soon-to-be-released film Return To Zero, about a couple whose child dies in the womb just weeks before his due date. Brooke is Brook Warner, editor of She Writes Press. Sean is Sean Hanish, the film's writer and director. He's also the father of that little boy. Three Minus One, to be published by She Writes Press in May 2014, will contain the essays, poems and visual art of women and men who have lost children through miscarriage or stillbirth. I am honored to be a part of this project and amazed that my voice will be among those speaking for all who cannot.

I must learn to live with Coyote, to know when it is time to raise my hands and shout to frighten him away or when I should back off and find someplace else to run. I can't fight every battle, but I can add my words to the peace treaty.

“You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story.” ― Anthony de Mello

Just A Homework Assignment

I'm currently enrolled in an essay writing course taught by writer and journalist Amy Paturel. Our first assignment was to craft a profile of ourself as a writer. How's that for a stretch of the imagination? Profile of a Writer-in-Progress

I ran my tenth half-marathon three weeks ago.  I completed my first long-distance race in November 2003 and I have run at least one half-marathon every year since.

So yes, I run. But I stumble when calling myself a runner. Runners are sleek, long-legged creatures who speak of fartleks, negative splits, performance shoes, PR's. Runners are "A" personality types who train to qualify for Boston, layout their gear the night before, and eat meals calibrated to maximize protein and carbohydrate loads.

Me? I've got ten pounds I can't seem to outrun, no matter how fast I sprint on interval days. I've followed several Runner's World training programs, but in all these years I've never broken out of the Intermediate Category. My running togs are crammed into a dresser drawer; early mornings find me cursing quietly as I sort out black shorts from dark blue shirts. I finally sprang for a fancy Garmin GPS sports watch a few months ago. Now I have an accurate-to-the-footfall accounting of how slow I am. Yes, I run. But I feel ridiculous saying "I am a runner."

I was in my early thirties when I first felt compelled to cross a finish line. Yet,the desire to write has been in me since I could tie a pair of tennies on my own. I have wanted to write since 1975, when I read Louise M. Fitzhugh's classic "Harriet the Spy," at the age of six. But the intent faded over the years to a "Wouldn't that be lovely?' dream as I pursued graduate work and created a career developing study abroad programs. I traveled, I schmoozed in various ivory towers, I had articles published in Transitions Abroad, a chapter in a textbook, and I contributed to our department newsletters.

But that was work; it didn't make me a writer. Writers attend Tuesday evening writer groups; they have bulletin boards covered in Post-Its that detail characters and plot threads; they have MFA's, manuscripts, agents, and a folder full of rejection letters that prove the prodigiousness of their efforts.

Two years ago I stopped keeping a journal, a practice I had started in 1975, inspired by Harriet and her notebooks. After a year's hiatus, I was aching to write. I wanted to be free from recording the minutiae of my day, yet be accountable to an audience. So last summer, I began this blog. I construct essays and book reviews and my reward is a writer's rush such as I never experienced scribbling in my journal. It's like a runner's high. Even when it hurts, and I suck, and I'm injured, and it rains, and I'm just not in the mood, running feels ridiculously good. Similarly, once the page begins to fill with words, the literary endorphins flow.

I am a self-taught writer; my classroom is the endless library of fiction and non-fiction that I live to read. I can conjugate the past conditional of irregular ˆre verbs in French, but I can't keep straight when, in English, to use a semi-colon or when a simple comma will do. I absorb the advice of the accomplished: Stephen King makes me think twice before employing an adverb; Natalie Goldberg fills me with guilt for not writing enough; William Faulkner compels me to murder my darlings; William Zinsser just scares the crap out of me.

Returning to the page in this blog has given me the courage to find my voice and to pursue fiction writing. I enrolled in a two-year, non-residency fiction writing program late last autumn. My writer-mentor critiques my assignments. I bask in or shrink with her feedback. I rewrite and carry on. I attend the occasional workshop at The Richard Hugo House, a writing center in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. I soak in the amazing writer juju and soothe my sense of inadequacy when we read our efforts aloud with the knowledge that I am taking essential risks. By risking, I will learn.

I find myself using the essay to mine my memory for inspiration. I search for sensations, images, encounters, even fragments of conversation that I can pin to my mental bulletin board. I am learning to listen and to look for the smallest details that will spark my imagination and ignite a new story. Based on the work I have submitted as part of my writing program, I am now working on a series of short stories inspired by my experiences living in Appalachia, the Rockies, central Africa, France, Japan, and New Zealand. And I dream of a stone cottage in the Languedoc where I would write to the sound of goat bells in the garrigue.

My first short story - and I mean first, as in written and submitted - was published last month.Thirty-six years after a precocious eleven year-old from Manhattan's Upper East Side - sporting black-rimmed spectacles, with a penchant for tomato sandwiches, and mentored by a Dostoevsky-quoting nanny - entered my life and inspired me to write, I have published my first story. Just don't ask me to call myself a writer.

N.B. I am now four weeks into Amy's essay writing course and preparing a couple of non-fiction pieces to submit to magazines in the coming months. The class been hugely beneficial - I highly recommend it - Amy is an amazing writer and teacher. And I'm keeping a journal again. 

The finish line- just a start, really...

Thirteen point one. Got 'er done, and in record time to boot. It wasn't the first half-marathon I've run, nor God and all her saints willing, will it be the last. But it was the most meaningful. It was the first half completed in my fifth decade. It was my first half after a stream of injuries. It was my first half as I  let go simultaneously of some dreams and embraced new ones. By the way, can we think of some other name for this distance? It's not half of anything. It is a whole 69, 168 feet; 27, 667 steps; 21 kilometers. It is a months of training, two sets of earbuds, 507 songs on the iPod, two pairs of running shoes, 3 seasons, a month or two of Sunday mornings devoted to the dreaded "long" run. Which kept getting longer. There is a movement afoot - so to speak - to rename the half-marathon "21k" or Pikermi, which is the town halfway between Athens and Marathon. I kid you not. Team Pikermi.

I took chances and learned lessons as I trained. For reasons to do with timing, planned vacation, surgery, and unplanned injuries, I followed a very loose and likely very inefficient training plan. It looked something like this: Run. A few times a week. Longer on one day. I debated for months the usefulness of my gym membership. In August I let it go - the first time in over fifteen years I haven't belonged to a gym. I decided that the mind-numbing stints on the elliptical and the miles on the treadmill would never properly condition my legs and feet for the road. I accepted that weight lifting was more about aesthetics and wasn't the best way to achieve sustainable fitness  (and truth be told - I do a lot of heavy lifting a few days a week at my day job).   I had to commit to the harder work of  training out-of-doors in all sorts of weather, of finding ways to cross-train that didn't involve equipment run on electricity, and of concentrating on yoga as a whole-body approach to building strength, stamina, and that all-important core.

I turned to my bike as cross-trainer #1 and landed hard on the pavement, derailing my training with ribs so sore that laughing made me cry.  I followed a night of dancing barefoot with a morning's hard run and landed myself in a big black boot, on my way to a stress fracture of my left metatarsal.  I ran my last long run too close to race day and found myself back in that damnable boot only days before the marathon, pumping ibuprofen and denying away the pain.

But somehow the self-inflicted insults stitched themselves together into muscles and bones that knew what they wanted to do once my feet crossed the starting mat. They ran and ran, even when I thought I'd run out of gas. My one stop was a stretch and pee break at the 4 mile porta-John. After that, the pavement rolled out before me, sometimes agonizingly uphill, sometimes painfully down. Miles 5-9 felt steady and smooth and I was able to enjoy the beauty of Lake Washington and the Arboretum at autumn's end. I lost my hat somewhere along mile 8, which wasn't a problem until about mile 10, when the wind rushed off of I-5, my reserves were running low, and I felt a deep chill building in my extremities. But mile 12 gave an extra jolt of adrenalin and that gave me the needed heat.

I didn't feel a great sense of accomplishment crossing that finish line. But neither did I feel wrecked or exhausted, just tired and happy. I had a sense of ease and energy, like I could do this again sometime soon. This past week of recovery week was harder emotionally - the post-event blues- than physically. I've walked long and hard, run short and tenderly, biked, and melted into some healing yoga. And I'm planning out the next race - perhaps Whidbey Island Marathon (half) in April, and a couple of local 10ks to keep me motivated through the winter. I'm investigating lessons with a swim coach to train again for a sprint triathlon.

And I'm already signed up for the Seattle Rock-n-Roll Marathon (half) in June.  It is this event I anticipate with particular excitement - my fingers are crossed that I will be joined by friends from near and far (I'd cross my toes, too, but I need them to train!). These friends are from my distant and recent past, some are new and some are those with whom I have corresponded for years but never actually met. Some of us will run the whole or half-marathon, some of us will walk, some will be cheering from the sidelines. If you are reading my blog post, I throw my arms wide and invite you to join us in June. If you are on Facebook, I'll add you to our training and support group - just drop me a line.

And a few notes to self, on those lessons learned:

• Miles 10-12 were rough. Means I need to do more long runs, earlier on.
• BUT longest run no longer than 12. That last mile is sheer adrenaline. I risked it going for 14 in training.
• Last long run 3 weeks out. No later.
• I'm pokey. I'm not interested in speed for the sake thereof- too much pounding on my joints and bones. But I could make an effort to be a more efficient runner. This means heading to the track at Greenlake and running fartleks. It's an excuse to buy a fancy new watch with supercool functions, right?
• And bleachers. Need to run the damn bleachers.
• My hips and psoas say "Thank you, Julie, for making an effort to stretch and strengthen us. Might we have some more, please?"  Ashtanga before breakfast. My new mantra.

Namaste.

Miles high

All week we'd been graced with autumn days that felt like the sound of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G - a swirling uplift of leaves and breeze, a gentle descent of sunlight in the western sky, impassioned bursts of color from trees singing their last joyous harmonies before winter's fugue silences their glory. But the weekend's forecast threatened the end of our sun-splashed reverie. The announcers on our local public radio station gleefully read the latest bulletins from the National Weather Service: winter storm watches for the mountain passes, high surf warnings for the ocean beaches. And for metropolitan Puget Sound? Rain. Pounding, driving, blowing, Pacific Northwest autumn rain. Rain that inspired the likes of Eddie Bauer and the founders of REI. Rain that makes Seattle the most book-reading city in the nation. Rain that creates a highly caffeinated yet oddly subdued collection of down-and fleece-sporting citizens.

I woke at 5:30 on Sunday morning and lay still in bed, listening. I could hear a few drips landing on the sodden plants beneath our bedroom window. But there was no steady patter of showers, no rush of wind gusts. The unexpected silence was such a relief. My planned training run was 10 miles and I dreaded having to slog through it as the rain soaked my shoes.

I rose for coffee and a pre-run yoga session. Shortly after 6:00, as I was grimacing through Crow, it hit. The glass front of the fireplace rattled, there was a howl from the living room window where I'd left it open just a sliver, and the building shuddered as a blast of wind careered in from the northwest.  Within moments the windows were streaked with thin streams.  "Well, kid," I thought, "you signed up for the no-bullshit training plan. You ARE running a half-marathon at the end of November. Rain is your present, rain is your future."

I stepped out the door shortly after 7, waterproof jacket zipped to my chin, long pants zipped tight at my ankles. And there was the moon, low on the horizon,  ripe and lush after waxing full during the night. The clouds rushed past carrying away the rain and the sky shimmered a silvery-blue. The wind blew deliriously, claiming its right to change the seasons on a whim.

And so I ran. I ran the steep climb from 65th to Phinney and descended cautiously on pavement slippery with Big Leaf maple and White birch leaves. I splashed through puddles that dotted the outer perimeter of Green Lake. I ran as the sun rose and the dog walkers emerged. I ran to the inner perimeter and dodged couples sipping lattes from travel mugs and moms trotting with strollers. I ran past the Aum Shinrikyo guy meditating in full lotus by the west end bathrooms, past the tai chi group practicing behind the viewing stands; I ran past the scullers and the geese paddling in their wake, past the turtles sunbathing on logs, past the Blue Herons posing in the shallows. I crammed my gloves and my earband into the pockets of my jacket and stripped to shirtsleeves, cursing my long pants as my body heat steamed through the layers.

About five miles on, it was as if someone had suddenly dimmed the lights from 75 watts to 40. The golden-green glow in the sky dulled to a lusterless gray as the clouds rolled in, heavy and low. And then the rain began. There was no warning interlude of slow drops. It simply spewed forth, pummeling straight into my face, sending my contact lens astray.

But I'd reached the crazy point. The point at which your body has settled in the groove, your endorphins are in command of the show, you are running because there is no other option, there is no other place you could be. As the paths emptied out, the walkers making a dash to the shelter of their cars and nearby cafes, the runners were left to splash through their circuit. You'd catch someone's eye as you passed, realizing that shit-eating grin smeared across their rain-plastered face was a mirror image of your own. There might be a nod, a lift of a finger, as an acknowledgment of the camaraderie between maniacs. Or you might simply be witnessing someone lost in their own pace, surviving their pain and the elements by the grace of will and the perfect set of tunes on their iPod.

I feel like I'm one injury, one disaster away from not running. The chronic pull in my groin,  the sharp twang in my left metatarsal, the deep ache in my plantar fascia have sidelined me in recent years (recent months!); only this week have I stopped feeling a jolt in my ribs from September's bike crash. So every run feels like a gift. I GET to do this. I get to run in weather than numbs my legs and leaves me shaking from a cocktail of adrenalin and exhaustion. I get to rise in the wee hours before dawn to do what I know will heal me -  yoga -  before I set out to do what shreds me apart.  I'll never be fast, I'll never be thin, I'll never assume the finish line is mine. But no one else runs those miles for me. Those miles are mine.

This morning I set out under clear skies. By the time I finished, the clouds had gathered and the first drops were falling. Today I ran 12.  The half marathon is twenty eight days away.