What I Watch at 5 A.M.

Don't you sometimes wish your car were
headed to the Waffle House instead?
--Downtown YMCA desk clerk who checks me in each morning

So the call of the gym at 5 a.m. just isn't that strong but it is enough to beacon me to the YMCA and go running on a treadmill. The downtown Y has a plug-in option on each treadmill so a bum like me can watch television while I run. Occasionally I'll plug into a discussion on BookTV .

To discuss my BookTV habit, even in cyberspace, leaves me conflicted. Here I am, committed to run x number of miles, and I have this opportunity to listen to smart people talk about books. What could be wrong with that? What's wrong with that is I haven't read the book itself and I feel somewhat like an interloper for listening in. Ultimately I've resolved that listening to an intelligent conversation can only leave me better off. Its not like I plagiarize the book, pose as an expert, or even pretend I've read the text. I like smart people. I've been lucky enough to befriend lots of smart people. Why not listen to smart people who happen to have written books?

This blog is a strange, rambling way for me to recommend the following BookTV discussions. In an era of iphones I don't generally make digital recommendations. I have, however, come back to the thoughts expressed in each of the following shows:

Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture
Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America
The Next American Century
In Defense of Food

Days, sometimes weeks, later I find myself glad for my 5 a.m. treadmill date. What kind of sick talk is that, you ask? Occasionally the treadmill brings me smart discussions that challenge me to think new thoughts and that's good stuff. Its not good stuff like hot maple syrup or a side of bacon from the Waffle House would be good stuff -- but its good stuff nonetheless.

Thrown To The Dogs

It's okay to love your pets, just don't looooove your pets.
--Janeane Garofalo, The Truth About Cats And Dogs

Brent's latest Mother Jones magazine arrived in our mailbox last week. From it he quoted a somewhat disturbing statistic. Evidently women were posed the scenario of their dog suddenly becoming human. The question asked for a true/false response to the statement "If my dog were to suddenly become human he would be my boyfriend".

Well over a third of the women answered in the affirmative.

Nearly Thirty-Five

I thought of a friend of mine from college named MacGreggor who was in a lot of my classes at CSU. The fact that I passed Dendrology is entirely attributable to MacGreggor (Mac)'s willingness to be my study partner. I lost touch with him years ago. A casualty of graduating college and both of us scattering from Fort Collins for entry level jobs. In the daily crush of “to-do” items in my planner and the ten years of time between my feet and the CSU campus I don’t think of MacGreggor often but I did think of him this morning.

Actually I thought of one moment with MacGreggor when I was twenty-two-ish and I bumped into him at the (no lie) Déjà vu coffee shop. His textbooks laid open, he invited me to join him. We talked about classes or roommates or some such and Mac mentioned a woman he was dating.

The female inquisitor in me fired off a bunch of questions to learn more about this new girlfriend. He answered my questions but all the while fidgeted with his coffee cup, re-arranged his highlighter pens on the table. I must have asked something along the lines of whether he really liked her when (and this is the moment that came to me) he stopped fidgeting, squared his shoulders and looked at me to say “Melissa, she makes me shiver.” MacGreggor didn’t throw around words or make romantic gestures for sport. Using a word like shiver could never have been inspired by its poetic value or because he'd rehearsed it for affect. He said it because it was true.

My thirty-fifth birthday is this week. Any birthday where my age ends in a 5 or a 0 inspires the pensive mood thinking about old friends, wondering what the future holds. The pensive moment overtook me this morning, I suppose. The smell of fresh coffee rising from downstairs, Naomi bemoaning how early it was, how sleepy she felt. I caught a glimpse of my wrinkled face in the mirror as I brushed my teeth and MacGreggor came to mind. I suddenly wished we had a coffee date at the Déjà vu so I could tell him that at nearly thirty-five life is good. He could buy me a cup of coffee and I could fail to elaborate about myself but brag about my kid. I have stumbled around to find or fix up a pretty good life. The sweetness of that realization made me shiver.

Ouch

We were made to bleed
and scab
and heal
and bleed again
-- Ani Difranco

I hate that feeling that accompanies someone’s failure to recognize the goodness and value of my friends and family. The teacher who feels compelled to clip my kid’s imagination, the boyfriend who could never never deserve my roommate, the employer that devalues the towering level of competence my friend brings to the task.

Who hasn’t had one of these phone call or couch conversations with someone you love? One where you looked at their slouched shoulders, listened to that sad mumble from their mouth.

The clarity you have from the outside of this sadness can’t penetrate it. Sure, you can state the obvious: the bootcamp ethos of the teacher, the algae goo dwelling in that boyfriend's heart, the mediocre ass-backwards of the workplace...but the timing is all wrong. Sitting on my couch, or cradling the telephone I am befuddled by how seldom the daily work we take on is appreciated. More than our deeds we have this enormous capacity to love, to inspire, to create. What is more amazing than that? What could be more admirable? What are we to make of the often occurence of being scrutinized, blamed, or battered by the critic du jour? Who hasn't sat on both sides of this sad scene?

And the worst part is that, love you as I do, I can't fix it. I’ve got Kleenex, and a couple of zings for the offender but I can’t fix it. The pain has to run its course. Eventually the person dries their eyes, and emerges on the other side of this - they graduate the grade, ditch the boyfriend, locate the office supply stash at some new job.

But in that moment, when everything hurts, its hard to believe that the essence of a person, for lack of a more exact term, the spirit is a vast and renewable resource. It gets all of us through. Sad or lost as you might feel, sweetheart, you just have to wait for it.

Slow Feet Sleepy Brain

When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep... and you're never really awake. – Narrator from the movie Fight Club

After a fitful night of something I can’t really call sleep it was early this morning when I gave up the fight. The pillow wasn't any more comfortable, my eyelids weren't any heavier than they were an hour ago so I untangled myself from the covers and slipped downstairs.

There is some trick to navigating my house in the dark. Old houses are an auditory mine field with stairs that moan, doors that squeak, and hot water pipes that clank.

I’m not so well organized that my running shoes are waiting for me by the door. I found them eventually and silently bundled up in layers to run a lap around my neighborhood. I like winter mornings when the streets are quiet, the sun is slow to rise.

I’ve never been a fast runner; the slow steady method works so long as I don’t expect to win any races. I started training last week for a half-marathon in May. My run this morning was part of an eleven-week conversation where my brain tries to make the case to my body that running 13.1 miles is an acceptable proposition. The half-marathon was a goal I toyed with for about ten years before actually completing it for the first time last Spring. Sometimes my body yelps or moans to remind my brain that this effort would have been a lot easier ten years ago. My twenty-something body didn't have so many creaks or complaints. The recuperation time was substantially quicker. Ah, well, youthful bodies are wasted on the young.

Running in the winter is this strange blend of extremes. The cold red cheeks and white fingers occupying the same body as the rapid-fire of one's heartbeat and sweat glands. The intersection of extremes occurs somewhere in my chest cavity. Its affected both by the cold, dry air and the steady, deep breaths running requires.

My quiet morning ended with the clank of the hot water pipes in the shower, the hiss of the coffeepot. The sun eventually made its appearance; the rest of my family emerged from their bedsheets. Stairs moaned. Doors squeaked.

Spreadin Some Lovins

I have tickets to hear Amory Lovins speak at the Lied Center tonight. Lovins is one of those wonky, engineering types who graduated from Harvard. He is revered in certain circles but largely obscure to most of us. It’s a real shame because this is a guy who has advocated energy conservation since the Opec Oil Crisis of the mid-seventies. He called for a Soft Path approach to energy policy (insulation, green construction for buildings, higher gas mileage, energy efficiency…the most inexpensive megawatt of electricity or barrel of oil is the one you don’t consume… etc.)

In a world that is increasingly cynical its hard to throw around words like visionary or hero without feeling geeky. But this guy has the goods. Take any moment in history, any group of people I could spend ten minutes with, and Amory Lovins shows up in the top five of my list every single time.

Because I’m pumped up to attend this lecture tonight, I felt compelled to put his name out there. Ask somebody who Paris Hilton is, or Tito Jackson and most people could offer a passing reference as to why they’re noteworthy. Ask us to conjure a visionary who has dedicated his life to advocating energy conservation and the collective mind draws a blank. I thought I’d offer Amory Lovins as a person to fill in that blank.

To learn his particulars, search on youtube, or check him out here:

http://www.sqwalk.com/blog2006/000764.html
http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3265.html
http://rmi.org/sitepages/pid41.php
https://secure.bioneers.org/node/518

Clearing the Air

It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it. – Dan Quayle

Naomi and I were up early this Monday morning to pack her lunchbox and prattle a little bit about our day. She had a book to read me for extra credit. Music class, always a favorite in her heart and mind, was a mentionable item on the agenda today as well. I made a brief comment that most of my day would be consumed by air quality issues. Naomi has a visual reference for the emission stacks at my workplace. She knows we have to be careful what, and how much goes up those stacks. It’s a basic understanding of what goes up comes down eventually.

I'll digress here, though I didn't this morning, to be a complete bore amongst adults and provide a level of detail unfit for my kid. My Monday was consumed by a decision handed down by the Federal court last Friday. The court essentially scrapped the EPA Mercury rules, affectionately know as CAMR which I would decode as an acronym but life too short to spend bogged down in obscure references, which puts the EPA and regulated community back to the drawing board on mercury.

Anyway, back to the breakfast table. Naomi and I spoke of her music class, packed her lunchbox. We slapped some Spanish rice in a warm thermos, string cheese, juice box... I staged some reluctance on the fresh strawberry score just to make her feel she pulled a fast one. She nodded through my brief reference to air quality being the focus of my day. I listened to a book about a girl named Kit. We polished off the morning with coats, backpacks, boots and we were out the door. As I drove her to school, I silently congratulated us both on a morning sans screaming or crying. Yay, me! I thought, I might get the hang of this parenting gig yet.

We pulled up to the school building, I opened her door, and Naomi burst out of the car like she had just been uncaged. She was running, full clip, toward the building screaming, “Run, Mommy, its raining poison lava from the sky!” This wasn’t one of those sing-songy screams kids will sometimes do in a misguided attempt to be cute; this was a slasher-movie-don’t-take-a-shower-at-the-Bates-Hotel scream.

I stood there, stunned, both by what a fast runner she is and how utterly consumed she was in this vivid scene in her imagination. Poison lava? If the poison doesn’t get you the scalding temperature of the molten lava will? What’s a mom to do but join her kid’s slasher movie and scream her way into the school building?

Note to self: hold off on further elaborating the acid rain rules to Naomi.

_____________

I filed this Op-Ed piece on the Democratic Presidential race under the category of thoughts I've had that are better articulated by someone a lot smarter, with lots more political sway. Yep, she copied my idea. Copy cat.