Park

should I put my website back up or should I keep waiting for something new? 1/100 blurry days

how do you describe uncertainty in your life?

Thanks, Tennessee Beach

Lately

In 2019, after five years of covering running, I began to love it for myself. When I say ‘covering’, I’m addressing the five years before 2019 where I followed the critically unhinged on my bicycle, camera in hand—pursuing those who threw themselves into city traffic, those who ran hundreds of miles across humid states in the middle of summer, whose lives revolved around the next stretch of miles. Many of these people have gone on to claim their accolades: first woman and second overall in the Last Annual Vol State 500k (@rhodasmoker ), top ten women marathoners (@jmmackattack , @caitlinphillips , @wicked.la ), magazine covers (@iamlshauntay , @samuel4nderson ), inspirations echoing in others (@matthewlukemeyer ), and those who those who first brought me into this world (@orchardstreetrunners ). But when I really started running for myself, the people who showed me why I should run are the people I still run with, and are the people with whom I will run to the ends of the earth–the sort whose skin is dusty with the slow movement of the sun across countless days, and who chase its progress beyond the horizon under blankets of stars until it returns the next morning. These are friends with whom I’ve covered thousands of miles in a hundred deserts. People with whom I’ve found a religion. People I can’t tag, but who all of you know. I began to run because there was something more in the staccato of other people’s footfalls that I’d been chasing beyond merely getting to know other athletes - a sort of transcendental state that I’d grown used to watching people fall into. I started chasing that state of grace in myself. That love has fractured and reformed many times, as many religions often do; shaken, dusted off, and rooted more firmly by the miles that sew it together. Running evolved from intrigue, to mental health tool, to injury, to fatigue, to healing, and finally to a form of personal freedom. This is what has brought me here. It’s a religion of rubber, crow’s feet, shoelaces, maltodextrin, laughter, and caloric deficits. It’s a faith without an explanation, because those who want to understand, already do. So I’ll see you all out there soon enough.

I'd like to think you are at peace, and if you are, this is what you see, Len. I have missed you, I will keep missing you.

incident as collaboration, a thousand reasons not to pay attention and yet incandescent I am standing in the middle of a Brooklyn Street, nervous and hoping to be seen. what good does it do to expect more of a moment, "what seed and what root" does a tree grow from if not firmly planted in Earth and instead in asphalt, cars passing overhead awaiting as a sapling tries to break ground, please, swallow me whole and fly far away in order to shit me out over some other expanse I am already the summary of every breath that I've taken and have attempted to gain ground through. I am that Branch seeking sunlight and finding instead the remnants of a deep orange phosphor glow acting as the sun, pitting me against pressure. "running is" more complicated than this, recognizing the full potential of not absolving yourself under conditions of surrender particularly when at the disposal of a grand gesture unattended, "I have already opened myself, kissed regret goodbye" and repeated this over and over as though a mantra that would change the present still I pounded Earth as though trying to plant roots with the soles of my shoes, the firmament (el firmamento) kicking back, all across Brooklyn until I couldn't hear my feet hitting the ground anymore, until all I was hearing was something that was similar to my breath but that wasn't coming from my chest, better yet I guess I wasn't expecting to hear so clearly exactly whatever the fuck was trying to get at me through the tarmac below me so , I opened myself up to the pressure of being out of breath, over and over again until somehow I saw You instead, spitting directly in my face as though to get my attention, "Yes, Lord" I'm paying attention now, I promise, and I really did mean to be doing so before It took me 10 years in Brooklyn to realize that I am firmly rooted across the entirety of how this place moves and that the explosive pressure of having made it was more about Transit, Transit than anything else (who knows what plants have tried to grow in the MTA system). so I'll just keep running I guess. It seems to be what this city wants from me.

i will surprise you, i think with the landmass i've become (and myself) because, laden with glacial pace, no prediction can be made from our collision. it is instead the polyphones of translated sounds shaking the ground and my calves and your skin. it is the chance to reposition into a floating epicenter; i am not in charge of how your intrusion is shaping me, i am simply bearing witness to it's arrival شاطئ. make from this what you will because it is yours. please know this, i have never folded my coastline in this shape and it is unfolding in your presence. the wakes to which i have grown accustomed, are crashing toward the middle, are thinning out as fine sand. let your ripples form new inlets on the contour of my inner thighs; a thousand years of constant movement has brought me back and you are shaping up to know exactly where i should go. رملي، شاطئي اللامتناهي. i will surprise you, i think, here in the presence of slow oceans i hope i will surprise you, i think. نقل العسل يا أرضي الصالحة.

Fall in love with what you're capable of. I'm not sure why I decided to run an ultra - it's sort of one of those things that I always told myself I wanted to do because it's something I've thought I might be able to do. @daddy_shango said it best at the end of the race when I said "I don't understand why people expect I can do this kind of thing" and he responded "take it in stride, you're adventurous, people see that" as though expecting anything less of myself would be too low a barrier. He's right. This was probably the hardest thing I've ever done, but after this, I know I can do more, and I know I deserve pride for doing more. I couldn't have done it without Thai and the whole @rageandrelease fam - too many to count (but @darth_moon , @adarklovestory , #instagramlesslauren, and @monalisa_kenny are a good start). Thank you for pushing me to recognize what I can do and push right up against that limit. On to the next hardest thing (iykyk).

i brought you five Mandarin oranges. it was meant to be six - but i gave one to a hungry man outside the grocery store on the way to your kitchen after I did a double take, realizing that I had more than I needed (i always do) and that everyone else had probably also brought so much more than my bottle of wine and my citrus fruits (i was right, by the way: the jollof was amazing so were the brussel sprouts, and all your guests were so kind and we clearly love you so much). anyway. i think it's always been a little bit more than I've needed, all of it, always, in increments - small amounts of too much - so i give in weird ways because i can never tell what someone doesn't have and probably because i feel bad abundance can feel comfortable enough for it to feel burdening, under a constant reminder that you can survive with less - as always these mandarins were probably more symbolic anyway, but i love offering things that are easy to share with others and i don't think that should stop. it's no wonder then that some choose to forget the value of sharing abundance with any class of relationship, sharing love in sharing the act of giving to those we hold dear or to loosely-held ties or to strangers because each act is segmented, apart. the act of giving to those who have less somehow is still selfish, it's also to make ourselves feel better about having more, even when we justify it with acting as though we're offering cosmic balance in the act, while to our friends is about meaningfully maintaining relationships or performing a desire to be platonic to those we love but somehow I decided to give you five Mandarins instead of six and as the party wound down all five were still there because they probably looked like decoration among the charcuterie (that's ok) while the man outside the store pocketed the fruit so quickly and looked so cold and i know he needed more than oranges and either way those Mandarins are out of my hands just like giving is more about reaching outside the self to identify what you can influence, correct, or justify around you:.when it leaves your hands it's no longer yours and that's ok (for Maggie)

What does it mean to 'work'? For who? For what purpose? What kind of work? For money? Money is a new idea, made up, it's not real, even as this 'work' obliges us to it. Love is real. Love is better work. I want work to be the act of abolition through a love of others. I want my work to be freedom from oppression and to feed this need. No one will pay me to do that, so my career can never be to do so. Our 'work' is to unlearn what oppresses us. This is the real work, I think. I'm not really willing to do anything less than this. The system we're a part of is designed to oblige us to take part - to play a small, quiet role in something that thinks of us only as a vehicle for its purposes. That's why it feels inescapable. If we take part, it makes things easier for us, which is why moving against it feels harder. The real 'work' is in resisting that oppression and finding something newer and more whole; a work of love. If work is love made visible, then you must work only for love of those around you, those you love, and those you might love. No work is more meaningful than this. Work in the service of oppressive institutions is only one system, and it is recent. You, reader, are escaping. You escape more every day, out of a need to do so. (written in response to a dm from @whitesaucenohotsauce )

windsweep pushing your fragments of "everything" between my toes, the heaven scent of wildflowers in our nostrils I held out the palm of my hand to catch sunlight, we argued for what seemed like eternity but was really half an hour; "Someday you will realize That where you are going Will never be as beautiful As where you are right now." and I'll stay angry because I can't change you