I've taken tentative steps toward beginning a 34-week long online retreat based on S. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises. A day into it, I'm struck by how convenient and well-structured, how much like exercise, it actually is. One thing I dislike intensely about Mass about is the length of it, the flatulent hymns with Wesleylan lyrics hooked to clunky Germanic tunes that stretch a liturgy to 70 minutes or so, about a half hour beyond its most suitable tautness. Like a good coat, Mass shouldn't be baggy. But I digress, and I hear the still voice inside saying I run 70 minutes or so nearly every day so why can't I just give 70 minutes for God and so on--nonetheless after 40 minutes Mass becomes performance and I find it humiliating to sit through any performance, to be forced against my will to watch and indulge. Monks in high school said Mass with an intensity and brevity that were reassuring; there was nothing recherche or otherworldly like a musical about it, just spirituality immanent.
The Jesuit Spiritual Exercises have a happy precision and system to them that befits S. Ignatius' soldierly bearing. I like them because they introduce a sytematic way to interpret yourself; reflecting on myself I feel like I'm leading a class through a text with a specific set of questions that opens it up in a logical and productive, though never exhaustive, way. The first exercise is deceptively simple: think of your first memory. This should be easy, should, we expect, bring forth a welter of vague sensory images and affects, visual mainly; maybe confusion between what we've been told and seen in pictures and what we actually experience. Fine. I don't know what my first memory is - I don't know whether it's something I saw in a home movie or something I experienced, just vague images of a street and a tree, no associations to place it chronologically. It is, I nevertheless know, a good memory.
And here's where the Exercises surprise you, opening up huge hermeneutic problems with a simple question. If the first memory is good, why is it that? who made it so? What does that say about the accidents of my birth, or those to whom it's been my good fortune to have been born? What are my first unpleasant memories, and what feelings, precisely, are they composed of? Are those feelings familiar and persistant, running through channels in my personality that I should be aware of?
The exercise aspects of the Exercises endear them to me, requiring as they do deliberateness, devotion, doggedness, digging down spadeful by spadeful to tap wellsprings of an improved relationship with God and with others and with yourself. Inspiration is achieved.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
out of shape
It's nearly two months since the fall marathon I ran and I've let myself get into slow and tubby (for a runner) condition. I let the diet go right after the race but kept up as much running as I could; then when it got cold in November I tweaked my quad and didn't run for a week, took it easy when I started up again and haven't been training hard since; then there was Thanksgiving. Eight pounds tell the tale. It's not muscle mass. I went to the gym to lift weights in order to rehab the quad--but that was only three times, the last time in the gym two weeks ago.I knew this would happen and I let it happen and was welcoming it during training last fall and summer, but now I know for a spring marathon I soon have to start cutting out the junk food.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
elegy for my fitness
Post marathon, I feel my fitness waning day by day - went for a run this afternoon and felt sluggish and winded and even uncoordinated. But that's OK.
I love the week leading up to the NYC marathon because of all the running coverage in both the NYT and the WSJ. Never is marathoning more visible.
I love the week leading up to the NYC marathon because of all the running coverage in both the NYT and the WSJ. Never is marathoning more visible.
Friday, October 28, 2011
More on Dewey
In "The Psychology of Effort" Dewey quotes a man trying to make a decision. The man says, "In deciding a question that had to be settled in five minutes, I found myself turned in the chair, til I was sitting on its edge, with the left arm on the back of the chair, hand clenched so tightly that the marks of the nails were left int eh palm, breaking so rapid that it was oppressive, winking rapid, jaws clenched, leaning far forward and supporting my head by the right hand. The question was whether I should go to the city that day."
The point is that mental activity takes a physical toll. Pragmatists are obsessed with moments of indecision (they're the only intellectuals who are embarassed by the traits of intellectuals) and the psychic havoc they wreak. Thus William James will counsel readers to cultivate habits--make as few decisions as possible, waste as little willpower. I've been writing twelve to fourteen hours a day for a month or so, cranking out the lingua franca of professional academia...and so "The Psychology of Effort" is my go-to text to know that it's OK to be tired by all this, that writing is real work, that every word, in fact, is a decision, and decisions take effort, and effort makes you tired. I write a lot on this blog about the moments when the run becomes doubtful, when I contemplating skipping--sometimes I skip and am glad, other times I don't skip. I had a workout of 5x1mi planned for this afternoon, but then I decided to go on a short run instead. The short run turned into a lovely 80 minute amble in the waning light of the first brisk day of the fall--which appears to be the lovely prelude to a snowstorm. I never get bored running and I wonder where the 80 minutes go. It's a strange ecstatic state. Well, better capitalize on this euphoria and see how much editing I can get through ...
The point is that mental activity takes a physical toll. Pragmatists are obsessed with moments of indecision (they're the only intellectuals who are embarassed by the traits of intellectuals) and the psychic havoc they wreak. Thus William James will counsel readers to cultivate habits--make as few decisions as possible, waste as little willpower. I've been writing twelve to fourteen hours a day for a month or so, cranking out the lingua franca of professional academia...and so "The Psychology of Effort" is my go-to text to know that it's OK to be tired by all this, that writing is real work, that every word, in fact, is a decision, and decisions take effort, and effort makes you tired. I write a lot on this blog about the moments when the run becomes doubtful, when I contemplating skipping--sometimes I skip and am glad, other times I don't skip. I had a workout of 5x1mi planned for this afternoon, but then I decided to go on a short run instead. The short run turned into a lovely 80 minute amble in the waning light of the first brisk day of the fall--which appears to be the lovely prelude to a snowstorm. I never get bored running and I wonder where the 80 minutes go. It's a strange ecstatic state. Well, better capitalize on this euphoria and see how much editing I can get through ...
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
The Debt
Great movie--go see it. suspensful, satisfying, morally complex tale of hunting Nazis--told through in a style that's more or less a horror film.
Monday, August 22, 2011
What is it about David Foster Wallace that makes everyone so anxious to have an opinion about him?
Good article in yesterday's NYT. Ex-reader of Derrida-turned-lawyer lays blame for imprecise language, imprecise thinking, and imprecise morals at feet of famous writer:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/another-thing-to-sort-of-pin-on-david-foster-wallace.html?_r=1&ref=magazine
Fresh off a recent jaunt up into the northernmost parts of NPR land (but really, it's a mental geography, isn't it?), I take her point about "sort of"/"kind of," and I would add to the list another pathetic temporizer, "way in which."
Now, the writer is a lawyer, and she embeds a personal story in this piece in which she narrates her conversion from theory to the "plain language" of the law, noting a corresponding change in literary tastes to the bluntness of Mark Twain. (Now, anyone should know that Twain's blunt tone holds loads of irony far more acid than Wallace's, and why she should imply that bluntness somehow arrests the dizzying motion of irony is beyond me.) She replicates some nostrums about deconstruction that are far too common in NYT/New Yorker land, that it was an excess of the 80s and 90s, that it's tra-la-la Gallic and ridiculous, that it's an age-appropriate phase for 20-year-olds, and that like college grads who go to law school, we should all outgrow it and get back to realist novels. (Which explains why a shitbag artist manque like Franzen can be held up as the savior of the novel.)
All deconstruction is is a way of reading that follows what's already in text, and what poets have always known, that despite a writer's best intentions he or she can't pin down their work to a single meaning because langauge always says more than we think it does. Which is just to say, words have echoes and connotations that we can't forsee in advance. The problem with deconstruction isn't that it's a recipe for immorality (though people treat it phobically as a symptom of decline and fall) but that it's obvious and should go without saying.
I realized on a long run this weekend that my hip flexors need strengthening, and I'm going to start doing this exercise to work on that: get into push up position, then pull your right knee up to your right elbow, repeat with left, and do this for a minute. Tried it this morning after 80 minute run and it felt good. Weak hip flexors keeping my turnover and speed from being what it could be. Tried to inject three marathon-pace miles (miles 14-16) into a 22 mi long run, and broke down at 2.5. Was fine aeorobically, but my hips were cashed...finished run at around 6:45 pace.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/another-thing-to-sort-of-pin-on-david-foster-wallace.html?_r=1&ref=magazine
Fresh off a recent jaunt up into the northernmost parts of NPR land (but really, it's a mental geography, isn't it?), I take her point about "sort of"/"kind of," and I would add to the list another pathetic temporizer, "way in which."
Now, the writer is a lawyer, and she embeds a personal story in this piece in which she narrates her conversion from theory to the "plain language" of the law, noting a corresponding change in literary tastes to the bluntness of Mark Twain. (Now, anyone should know that Twain's blunt tone holds loads of irony far more acid than Wallace's, and why she should imply that bluntness somehow arrests the dizzying motion of irony is beyond me.) She replicates some nostrums about deconstruction that are far too common in NYT/New Yorker land, that it was an excess of the 80s and 90s, that it's tra-la-la Gallic and ridiculous, that it's an age-appropriate phase for 20-year-olds, and that like college grads who go to law school, we should all outgrow it and get back to realist novels. (Which explains why a shitbag artist manque like Franzen can be held up as the savior of the novel.)
All deconstruction is is a way of reading that follows what's already in text, and what poets have always known, that despite a writer's best intentions he or she can't pin down their work to a single meaning because langauge always says more than we think it does. Which is just to say, words have echoes and connotations that we can't forsee in advance. The problem with deconstruction isn't that it's a recipe for immorality (though people treat it phobically as a symptom of decline and fall) but that it's obvious and should go without saying.
I realized on a long run this weekend that my hip flexors need strengthening, and I'm going to start doing this exercise to work on that: get into push up position, then pull your right knee up to your right elbow, repeat with left, and do this for a minute. Tried it this morning after 80 minute run and it felt good. Weak hip flexors keeping my turnover and speed from being what it could be. Tried to inject three marathon-pace miles (miles 14-16) into a 22 mi long run, and broke down at 2.5. Was fine aeorobically, but my hips were cashed...finished run at around 6:45 pace.
Friday, August 19, 2011
a few random thoughts
Haven't blogged in a while, but here are a few things I've been thinking about, including a household hint.
Begun in July, the no sugar diet has been a success so far, with only one exception made for a piece of wedding cake that it would have been rude to turn down. Avoiding both obvious and hidden sugars (and hidden sugars abound), I've been able to get pretty near racing weight while being able to eat enough good calories to fuel intense training through high quality carbs, protein, and fat. Basically, this means lots of fruits and vegetables, plenty of whole grain bread (watching the ingredients for hidden corn syrup and trying not to eat bread with ingredients I've never heard of), eggs, peanut butter, meat and fish (but not processed lunch meats), cheese, milk, frozen burritos, more-than-occasional slices of pizza, and frequent trips to Chipotle (high in sodium, a little austere and unwelcoming in decor, but otherwise a perfect combo of runner macronutrients). To get all the way down to racing weight, I'll just give up the cheese, pizza, burritos, and eating out for the month of September and to the extent possible, eat only home-cooked meals, no cheese. I've strugged to get to race weight for prior marathons and have basically done it by going light on dinner for three weeks before a race, but this doesn't work all that well for be and has frequently been punctuated by lots cookies and snacking the whole day through. Why not eat an afternoon box of cookies if you're going to suffer through roasted onions and asparagus, light on the olive oil, at dinner?
Quick household hint: Regular peanut butter adds lots of sugar so I've switched to the natural kind. But natural peanut butter is gross and oily and a pain in the ass to open and stir and ultimately makes you appreciate the miracles of modern industrial food processing. What to do? When you get home from the grocery store, simply turn the jar of peanut butter upside down--the oil will separate, but at the bottom of the jar and the peanut butter will be less oily, and you can open it without a mess.
On an unrelated note, Tammi and I watch a lot of TV-on-the-internet, including, lately, old episodes of Sex and the City, season four most recent. Two quick observations:
1) Sex and the City provides an archaeology of communications technology, an index of how many new gadgets have penetrated our lives since the show's run from 1998-2004. There's one episode where Carrie wrestles with whether to get AOL and when she does, how to communicate with the estranged Aiden. The old cell phones, of course, are great too. Related to this is Carrie's seemingly now obsolete profession as a columnist (by 2005 she would've been a blogger, by 2008 a Tweeter) and the show's now obsolete conceit of voice-over diary. Writing on your clunky mac in a sweatshirt and your underpants is more akin to Doogie Howser (which pioneered the computer diary voiceover) than anything we know today. To us, computers and private thoughts just don't mix; in the form of blogs (which are now obsolete), journals record not solitary voices recollecting emotions in tranquility but snipe violently at the world, in increasingly shorter form, projecting more than introspecting. This isn't good or bad, it's just a measure of how SATC, ten years on, dates.
2) What's up with Miranda? I never realized what a poisinous, censorious bitch she is. All the other characters are charitable, good listeners, open to new kinds of experiences. Miranda's phobic, sarcastic, paranoid, and constantly demeans others. They write the show as if she and Carrie and closest, but I can see no reason why Carrie's friendship with Miranda wouldn't become a burden over the years. Miranda affirms nothing, praises no one, brings the group down like the out-of-tune alto in a bad sax quartet playing Christmas music in front of TJ Maxx. And she's another instance of how the entertainment industry always makes redheads evil.
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