Last week I looked at some support groups for widows, just to see what's out there. There was one for people who looked a lot younger than me. There were a couple that had activities such as bowling, bingo, and bridge--none of which I am any good at and am not likely to take up now. There were some for people who looked a lot older than me.

I decided instead to register for a half marathon in my hometown this fall. I stumbled across this opportunity in the back pages of an old Runner's World magazine from last summer, which announced the very first such event (a combo of a 10K, half- and full-marathons) last fall. I discovered it will be repeated this year.

Committing to this particular race seemed appropriate, even though the idea sort of takes my breath away. It's been since last November since I ran with any regularity, so it's not quite like starting over but sort of. I certainly have never run that far, but by the end of the last couple of summers I've been running six miles without trouble. I've picked up a couple of pounds but more disturbing than the pounds is the underwear muffin top, which of course means muffin top with everything. Muffin top means flab, so I don't want to lose pounds as much as I want to lose flab. I like running and want to get back into it with discipline. I am experiencing (or was--I seem better now with some stern mental admonishments) anxiety, for which we all now know exercise is one management technique.

Finally, I wanted to see my hometown/homestate relatives again before I get really busy with all the plans and contingencies I have created as another approach to counter anxiety. I plan to be busy before then, but I can plan around a trip I schedule now in almost all scenarios I can foresee, especially if I plan to travel light and cheap and put the money aside now.

Preparing for this half-marathon will be an adventure I expect to inform and possibly transform my whole life. I know from this last year that life can change without warning. For just this reason, the race sponsor has a special small "stuff happens" fee in case one can't make the race for which she has registered, but can do another put on by that same sponsor. I think that's a really good idea, but my real point is that I'm a little skittish about making plans these days, certainly any plans very far into the future. I can just hear God laughing.

Signing up for this race made me want to get started getting back into shape right away. I will be using the training program from Chi Marathon by Danny Dreyer of Chi Running fame; I am planning to use the beginner's training for a half-marathon which is 16 weeks. I'll have to start that the first of June, so between now and then I just wanted to get back into the routine and build my distance back up. Since then, we have had at least two spring snowstorms (including one right now) and some pretty serious cold and/or wind. I am a sissy about running on ice or in extreme cold, especially windchill. I suppose this weather is considered a roadblock. I will have to have an alternative training plan for such times. There is a gym in my complex I have never used, so I can check that out even though I dislike running on a treadmill. I also have Zumba DVDs, which I can probably jump around to even though I haven't learned the moves yet.

My goal is to be back up to running without walking three miles by the first of May (yikes! two weeks!). I can run and walk that far now, mostly running.

It seems like a new experience, planning events and travel without having to think about DH and how it will affect him. I do have to plan for a kitty sitter, which of course was his job when I was gone in the past. There is no backup anymore, and that is truly a new feeling. Even before I married, there were parents and grandparents for moral and emergency support. They are all gone now.

As I'm writing the end of this post, I have been watching the disturbing breaking news about the explosions at the Boston Marathon. Such news does not make me fearful, it makes me sad and angry and rebellious. My thoughts are with those who were injured and the families of those who were killed.

This is my second week of running for an hour three days a week. This sounds like a really long time to run without stopping to me, but it doesn't usually seem that long while I'm doing it. I'm still slow, but I am surprisingly persistent.

That persistence has been useful to draw upon with my painting lately. I'm moving along, slowly, even though the Transcend series looks like a bunch of linoleum tiles right now and my other painting is just big and scary. Sometimes in the past I have kept on with projects, but other times I have just stopped. What seems different now is that I'm not listening to the chatter in my brain quite so much. Or rather, I hear it but I'm not paying much attention to it. Most paintings go through phases when they don't seem quite right; at least, mine do. There are plenty of stages left to adjust and refine and finesse.

One of the things I always want to know in the books I have about painting is what is the artist thinking when she or he chooses elements of the painting? I particularly wonder about this with collages. The technique is usually clear, but I suppose it's my nature to wonder about the psychology and the decision-making process. So I'm going to include why I'm choosing what I do in the Transcend series.



I put a light smattering of white on the clear background to fade the collage a bit. It was too visible compared to the way I envision it for the end result. There isn't any particular reason for this choice other than to lessen the clarity of the original collaged headlines.



Next, I sponged some indigo paint over the surface, more or less randomly. Indigo is a color that has seemingly contradictory meanings to me. It's one of my favorite colors; it's the color of night, my favorite time, and is somehow comforting to me. Which is odd considering that for me it also represents the color of dark nights of the soul, when everything seems meaningless and hopeless. It seemed an appropriate color for this stage of the background-building process. I followed with a smattering of blood red, which represents pain to me.

This all seems rather dark and depressing so far, although I'm not feeling affected by the negative aspects. As the working title indicates, this series is all about overcoming. So it is necessary to identify what must be overcome. A change agent will say that the first step in the change process is to clearly and honestly identify the problem, to tell the truth about what is so. This early part of the paintings corresponds to that part of the process.

I'm planning to carve a stamp for the next stage. I am hopeful the approach I've started to transferring the image is going to work; if it doesn't I'll have to try a different technique.

“It is not reality that has a time flow, but our very approximate knowledge of reality. Time is the effect of our ignorance.” —Carlo Rovelli

mys·ti·cism n.
1. a. Immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality or God.
b. The experience of such communion as described by mystics.
2. A belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience.
3. Vague, groundless speculation.
(The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.)

Two things this week made me think about time. The first was my running. I ran twice as far Monday as I did last Friday. I'm on target for six weeks out, but I definitely didn't expect to be when I finished that Friday run. The second was that I received some completely unexpected help on a project. This help cut two weeks off the time it would have taken me to do the project on my own.

I’m just saying that sometimes things just don’t take as long as I believe they will, and that still always surprises me. Breakthroughs can come unexpectedly and sometimes inexplicably, and sometimes are so subtle I barely notice them. I think noticing them makes life more interesting, so I try to pay attention. Speculating about their advent allows me to believe there is a possibility of mastery, a chance that I can learn to summon little miracles.

If you are familiar with Esther and Jerry Hicks and their work with Abraham, then you will recognize their take on the illusion of space and time in this video:



As I neared the end of my run Wednesday morning, I was passed by another runner. She was older than I am by maybe ten years; since she came from behind (and from nowhere, because I hadn’t seen her in any direction before I turned the corner) I only caught a glimpse of her face as she passed. Questions came to mind that I wanted to ask her, and I thought if she slowed down or stopped near where I would end my run I would talk to her. But she was still running and long gone by the time I reached the pond where I start and end my runs right now. I could see her cerulean blue shirt way off on the street above the pond. I was faintly disturbed by how quickly the gap between us became kind of vast.

Later I thought how strange this encounter was. I’ve been walking or biking or, now, running in this area for years and never have seen her before. (Of course, there are a number of reasons that this could be so.) Plus, she really did seem to come out of nowhere. I decided that I had encountered a future me. She was about my size, only slimmer, with silver hair (mine’s still richly brown with only a few silver threads, thank you, but it will go silver eventually). If I consider this an encounter with a future me, then I have an image to hold on to while I continue my training, an image of me in several years being stronger, faster, more steady (and slimmer). I like that image a lot more than some of the alternative images of the aging process.

Could such an encounter be possible? Years ago I heard or read a statement that time is a human construct, not some force of nature. I know that Einstein addressed this idea. I’ve heard it several times since, and every time I hear it I keep trying to imagine life without time. I can experience the absence of time (when I'm painting, for example), but I can't seem to imagine its absence.

Anyway, I found this interesting article about the illusion of time: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726391.500-is-time-an-illusion.html?page=1. The quote at the beginning of this post came from this article.

Finally, this whole post reminded me of a poem, which I will share in closing.

Love After Love

The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.
Feast on your life.
—Derek Walcott

I started running about a month ago, three times a week. I’ve been really surprised at how easy it has been. I am following Stu Mittleman’s technique as described in Slow Burn, combined with a slower build-up described in a magazine I read somewhere and the alternating walk/run plan that I followed a zillion years ago when I used to run before. I dug out my copy of Runner's World Complete Book of Women's Running by Dagny Scott, but haven’t re-read it yet.

I’ve adopted a very smooth, very slow (probably kind of silly-looking) running style and am now running a whole mile without stopping. That’s pretty exciting to me. I have no pain and I’ve been doing it long enough now that I’m looking forward to my running days. I’m not working on speed yet; I’m first trying to keep that smooth gait (to minimize injury) and to build distance. I’d like to be running three miles after about two more months.

I was given a heart monitor for my birthday a couple of weeks ago, so I’ve been using that. However, my pedometer crashed about two days after that so I’m not able to increase by distance initially. It’s hard to measure my route by car. Maybe I can tell by time until I can get the foot POD that goes with my monitor.