Scan the poem visually first
If you see a poem
With at least one line
Ending in a long dash –
You should read that poem –
With a pause at the end
Of only the lines –
Ending with that long dash
Writing
My 100 Mile Running Week Experiences
“How many hundred mile weeks do you run a year?”
That was the question I got asked most during a tour of the 2000 Vancouver International Marathon’s elite athlete reception that my elite running friend from Nova Scotia, Smartex Tambala, had taken me to out of his kindness. To be fair, a lot of the elite marathoners in that room got asked that as well, almost like the standard greeting to ask to start conversations, but the reception wasn’t just for the elite athletes. It was also for their friends, family, and other guests, of whom I was one courtesy of Smartex. However, I seemed to have looked the part enough at 5’2″ and about 102 pounds that the other elite athletes risked being wrong about me not being one, rather than potentially insult me by assuming I wasn’t elite athlete material. It’s been the only instance in my life where I had been presumed that way rather than the opposite. And as ridiculous as the question was for me at the time, peaking at maybe half of that mileage weekly, it stayed on my mind long enough to be a psychological itch I ultimately had to try and physically scratch.
One More COVID Wave Despite Vaccination?
As the world start to reopen with more and more people getting vaccinated for COVID-19, there actually looms a possibility for one more wave of COVID-19. Worse, this wave might even worse than those seen so far in the western world, at least, where there’s been lots of resources devoted to controlling the pandemic. This is because while the vaccine is highly effective at 95%, for the best case scenario, that still leaves one in twenty people at risk in what might eventually be a bit of a “free for all” scenario for spread with people being a lot closer, without masks, in large group, etc. Five percent of any population is a lot of people! Do the math for your city, state, province, country, whatever.
The Frequent Unknowing of How I Should Be Feeling
A few weeks ago, I had mused about writing my own book about running while writing what I thought of the book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami. I certainly have enough stories for one, and hope to still have enough for one going forward as I begin a new phase of my distance running with a new style of running. However, I’m not sure where it’d all fit into my writing and/or life plans, this running book I’m thinking about. To test those waters then, and/or perhaps just to make notes in case I write one, I will be dropping the occasional running vignette for my writings on this blog. Here’s the first one.
A Self-Study of a Contest’s Winning Modern Poetry Entries
A few weeks back, I was able to share a short poem I had written this year that didn’t fare well in a local poetry competition, with anticipation of seeing the finalists and/or winning entries so I can “self-study” them as one more of many attempts to “get” modern poetry. Well, I got them and have shared them below, along with some self-study notes.
Digital Citizen 