Also refracted by running

I am also refracted by running
turned and returned
rainbow radiated
Westward whirled;
running's foot-crunch
echoes long, on and on.
Being curls through me
glossed, glistened
its longering song-beating

my heart feet.

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Extravagance

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Risen by running

I am risen by running
footpath kneaded
effort warmed
star-glow fired
foot-flip quickened
soul fed, spirit spread
Fill fully fed.
Risen through the risings of running
grass songs
cliff whispers
profusion perfumes
newal and renewal aches
cycle and recycle chafes.

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Photographs of running

I like to take pics while I'm running.
I also like the way 
running is etched, chiseled sometimes into my memories; 
into my runtan;
 polished into the moon-glints from my eyes

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Measures

Run measures once: hours, minutes, seconds, parts of seconds passed; kilos and metres crossed. 

Run measures too: waterfalls rainbowed, puddles splashed, silence forested

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Steeled by running

I am steeled by running

blue-sprung calves
grey-hardened feet
alloyed mind-body 
folded and refolded
reheated, rehammered,
quenched in life's stream,
moon polished, 
dawn etched, 
starlight inlaid; 
finger-tips, tongue left to tingle,
eyes to glitter.

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Beginnings - an affection

Once I couldn't run. I could chase a ball, dash across a road, play with children. But not run consistently even for just a kilometre; still less every day.

Even if I could have, the plain fact was that I didn't. Physical effort, besides the odd hike and moving furniture, even though I was strong and healthy enough, wasn't part of my life.

Had to change. Degenerated too far, fattened, lungs clogged. There was no “I” in this, it wasn't me deciding. A deeper drive engaged. Run.

Snuck survival

Into late nights I sneaked. Flung myself at a road, at my ignorance. Sounds serious. It was. It was also quite funny. I did it as lightly as I could; laughed maybe half as much as I gasped, more after. A circular route  took me over a hill; so once going, it was the same effort going back as going on. No going back, I forced myself through a long, long kilometre and a bit. I wheezed lots and, well, always felt beaten. 

My shins flared. I had to stop. Then start again. Didn't feel like it. Start again. Felt like I was making no progress. Start again.

Even had I known about a running group, a coach or guide who could help, I wouldn't have gone far too embarrassed to display me-like-that.

A year later I could run maybe three kilometres with a rest halfway. That made me feel okay enough to run in daylight on a road where others ran. I couldn't believe how they chatted into the foreign lands past my limits. 

In my defence, and with more than a hint of affection, I offer that this running, between walks and gasps, was done at around 4 min/km. I ran as far as fast as I could. I didn't know slower was also running. I was just doing my school-days running.

Six more months got me through five km, later to the end of a ten km with just a water break halfway, just a little slower than 4 min/km most likely. Got me glory no less, like Christmas tree lit from dark to magic,  a city at dusk when the lights come on.

New beginning

As a somewhat-runner, I joined a running group. First thing I learned: getting somewhere is just a new beginning. Two, three years after I first tried roads, I began again, stumbling behind runners who could chat and joke their way through twenty-two km.

Second thing I learned was that maybe it was an idea to buy proper running shoes and shorts. 

It was okay. I knew how to wheeze and stumble and get somewhere. As all starting does, my running start grew step by step run by run. 

Affection

Many miles later I still have this deep affection for those first floppings.

Beginning is just the hardest part of running.

So too do I have an affinity for the very real people who start or restart running; those who want to lift themselves to a higher level. I know what it it takes. I am that hum; it still thrums in me. 

I also know it helps for someone to be there with them. I had spent much time being with myself to get going. 

Once I spent time leading a beginner running group. It was easy for a Saturday morning three-hour fun runner,  a regular marathoner and more, to be with them for forty or so minutes which mostly became an hour, a couple of times a week. He just went out and got in a few more miles on his own.  

A great privilege it was to see them grapple then grow; to see them animate and glow; to be part of their first 5 km run, their first 10 km run, in a small way.

Re-beginning

Maybe my affection is just that often I had to re-start running: after not being able to run because of a knee-problem; after knee-cartilage surgery to resolve the problem, after the second knee was cut and trimmed too; after an illness.

A harder restart was after doing too much running and losing interest. Not much running for 6 months. Driven out again, I started, a beginner once more, jogging as much as I could through just one km out, then after a deep breath that huge km back, three times a week.

At the start of my first 100 mile run I felt David Bowie's sung-idea of being an “absolute beginner”.  Being a relatively seasoned short ultra runner helped little - the longer distance was completely daunting; the other runners looked terribly body-mind tough while I wobbled and ran inside. 

Hardest was starting again after five years of little running. My life had changed, I thought I filled with running enough. It was hard: start, stop: cold or 'flu. Start again, stop: knotted calf. Start, stop, grit my mind, start again. 

Running promises that you get stronger the longer you do it. 

I did know,it was possible, I had done it all before. I knew I didn't have to run at even 5 or 6 min/km. But know is know and do is do and the doing was hard, until it was done. Three years later if could run as I pleased again. I won't stop again.

And so

So I have this absolute affection for beginnings of journeys. 

Beginnings redeemed me. Got clean lungs, empowered heart, thinner sometimes. 

Got a richer life from those first dark, retching steps.  I even got to run mystical miles.

Beginnings are always there in what I do, beginnings, restarting. I am just a begun beginner.

As I run more years, my first steps are still there, affectionately wrapped in a corner of all my runs.

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Forged by running

I am forged by running
formed on an anvil
being fired into me:
panting a late afternoon path
to mountain top empty
but for shadows, 
serenity
and the flares of 
teeming flames of life

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Fire flame

Lately I run harder, feet slap, ankle twitch, calf wrench, mouth grin; charge a hill, stride out a flat, ease a steep down; eat my lung-suck-heart-race. My mystic rose there, in that forge off that anvil. Got to fire the fire.

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Wrought by running

I am wrought by running. Bound, rebound for a rock in a rushing stream
mistake moon-gleam on puddle for moon-sheen on rock,
splash on, mistake reed-clump for ankle-suck mud,
laugh-curse, squelch on
grit-toed, grinning.

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Tempered by running

I am tempered by running.
My path unwinds,
hard enough close,
ethereal in the distance,
into which I dissolve.

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Mind opens

5 km run with mountain stream


Body sings,
mind quietens
then opens
magnificently

33.7 km run over mountain with sun or mud


Run, your body strengthens
you can play, race and explore with that strength
Run on, your mind quietens
Run on and on, your body and mind merge
Further on as one, you open to all that is
You, a fragile, robust marvel of life, 
in this bursting great being,
as you run race, play, explore it.

Enough

Run strong, body sings
Mind opens, blossoms.
Mind and body merge.
Spirit rises 
when running with singing body, blossoming mind.
Spirit rising: the marvel, the reward
It is enough.

More

 ... Until I see, more is made in running 
the rising spirit
More is made
in the next repetition, in the next beat
of feet on the run-drum.
More:  the mystic of which I write,
and, crack-voiced, sing
of mystical miles,
through which I run and beam,
Bits of which gleam in my fingertips
in kitchen, at desk, at traffic lights.

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In my run-in soul

Harder running secretes in me

a gorgeous, iridescent flow

which forms itself

around a flake of the flame

that sparks my life.

A new layer now,

of purple-gold with a tripple of green song,

lets my soul-pearl grow and glow.

(Context - I'm back from being part of Comrades Marathon 2013 with a medal sure (see http://www.time-to-run.co.za/ultimatecomrades/ if you like) and a lot more. And Life doesn't stop yet.  Part of what comes next is to keep this pearl fired here in daily life. The pic is from Freepix.com)

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Running okay

I just have to say that I like the way

that running made running okay

took me through its blister and wheeze

so pierced me receptive

and so tingled me responsive

and let the halo of sun

billow around me too

even on days I didn't run

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Floating

Now past the jar of heel on tar
I can float four hours through
another full filling moon,
an on through its waning too

With its ginger-tingle of infinity
still that sunlight refracts
into ever deeper corners 
of this runlinging me.

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More

More

And then the richness 

of a long running moment.

Breathing a song of waterfalls, 

the flap of feet on tar; 

back nuzzled by the newly risen sun; 

a mind unclogged, clouded-blue pouring in;

a soul taut, trembling

to the song of the universe

And still more to run, still more to come.

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Stencil

Saturday after 6 am,

after 4.5 km up hills

in the dark past the last streetlight,

I hopped out of time-space

into a billowing profusion;

pinned branches to the sun,

allowed it

to stencil them on to me.

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The UltradeepBlue.
I still want to go there more.
First though to complete the preparation:
Get this body-mind a bit stronger
cleanse,tune this eager soul
... soon

Paul

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Blossoming

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Pulsing

That's me you know, running late summer heat, eyes aglow, flipping off a street, up a crunchy track. 
It's also me stopping out of the wind, cheek to comfort cliff, looking over city lights through clouds to the stars higher, feeling my pulse slowly slow deep.

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Frolic in an autumn mist

Later in the reflection of the run, as its flares refract, still more burns in me.

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Through, further through

Through, further through, the chafe of running 
is being out there among sun and stone. 
Feet float, flow, fizz. 

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Through running

In the sweat and grind, the race and beat of running, the thought rose in me that there is more perfectly magnificent.

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Beauty engaged

Beauty engaged is richer for me, than beauty only seen. Running engages me, meshes my cogs with the greater gears of being. More of Life begins to turn. Then more still. 

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Entering lightness

Feet crunching, soul quivering, out in everything, exquisitely.

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These harvest-dawn runs linger now in their end. 

My legs don't want this over just yet, lust yet, stir up dust yet.  

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The mystic, technically – Part 1

In there; there in me

The first mystical miles

Out on yet another run I became aware of myself differently in the world.

Awareness grown, fed by watching myself run thousands of kilometers through the world. 

Awareness in me had bloomed enough that day to reach my consciousness. 

I had run into the world. It had reached for me. A mountain shrub against my leg, we bristled;  an owl's wing-beat was the thrum of me; sunrise poured gold into me. I overflowed. My breathing breath-full, a flow bursting with scents and tastes of the plants that made and cleaned it, with supernovas that created it.

I found magnificence. Together we became perfect. The world, the universe, included me. Happy. Enchanted.

Religious Mystics

I knew about religious mystics. All religions have those who approach, connect directly, commune with the highest powers, with God. The mystic path parallels the one of prayer, praise, ritual, sacrifice, ceremony and more. 

I knew too that religious mystics all, in one or other way, go through a process of shedding or moving away from the everyday life, its chores, struggles and rewards. The mystics open themselves. Some ascetically, some as journey of cleansing and denial, others in whirling ways; the Rasta's smokily.

I knew then what I had found.

A wrought mystic, a path

Sweat, effort, grind, at times darkly, running essentialised me. A moving-just-me with minimum technology: pants, warming top if I needed it, shoes for my ticklish feet; an orange and apple until they were gone. Water I knew where to find.

Running lustily.Every-weekend three- or 4 hours runs, ties with the everyday stretched and broken. Also shorter runs, sweaty chest to breast of summer afternoon heat, hillside track, feet whisking grass. 

I understood the path:  run,watch and understand, run more and more with growing understanding of running, life and being.

Mystical miles. Marvellous. Simple, easily repeatable, ever-renewable, ever-enriching.

Those then

Were the first mystical miles, the crystal kilometers as they sparkled and flared. Were enough too. Yet there was to be more.

In the Logic of the Mystic, the beginning feeds its blossoming. 

 

Contextualiser

My running and experiences are not denominated religious actions and experiences. They have no claim to religion and no challenge either. It's just me in the majestic mystic.

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There is being and tugging at it, non-being. 
I'm being. 
Oiled by autumns, polished by running. 
Gleaming.

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Tree of Life

  A life tree

If I could I would sculpt this tree, for it symbolises the basics of life for me.

First survival.
Up there in the Lions Head cliffs, that tree, found enough to make a life, in mostly soil- and water-less stone. A life against wind, summer-dry, winter-storm, man-fire.
Then, strong,
it nurtures, shelters as it can.
Then majestically when it can, maybe because of its views, it blossoms.
That tree is me. Foot-burnished roots entwine with my worn-in toes.
That living tree hears the creeping closer chainsaws of the Fynbos-Fundamentalists;
And I hear the distant song ethereal
That tree, even those cliffs and me, we are.

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Regular Rhythm Run

In the doing it's done,
in the singing it's sung,
under the moon it's run.
A repeated-enough-rhythm,
drum-sung, drum-run,
lets us sing our hearts,
run our soul,
wink the effort-glow.

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In the moment

Ran into the moment, its dazzle and glow.  Went back for its perfecting sparkle and flare. Then in that shimmer saw something more; ran to it too. In that running, the moment marvellously began to blossom.

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Every step I've run is there in each step I run. Every summer too, and every song I've sung. So I go on, foot after foot. My life fills more, passes less.

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Run writing

I ran into life.Writing running engaged my mind. Leg-mind running opened my soul. Mind-Feet-Soul running deepened the thrill of being, let me run my mystical miles. More waits for me to run-write-run.

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My feet have run me far. Worn in, worn well. They glow. With a twinkle in the toes, a tingle. They get my affection. Often they scrabble, eager.

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Beginning

Here then running. Running, running long, running life, through universe warmed and welcomed by its magnificence. Running this foot on the ground then that, over and over, deeper and deeper, soul full-filling, spirit flaring ever flowing.  

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