Living Life With Arms Wide Open

Here's an email to my pace group folks. It was a great day.

Lena-

Thanks for your email. And curse you for mentioning cheeseburgers and fries which made me walk an extra 25 yards today. How could you?

I love our pace group(s). It's funny, I think it's something about the 11:30ers. My last training group of Switzers 5 years ago were also uniquely connected and enthusiastic. Can I say that was a pretty phenomenal smorgasbord we put together? Well done, people.

So--today was hard for me. I wanted to stop at mile 12 but forced myself into being present, thinking of each interval as a mini-accomplishment. It was no longer, "What the f--- four more miles?" but, "Thank God we'll be walking in 1:29...". The energy of being a training group carried me farther than I ever would have gone alone.

Thankful for the downhills, the conversations, the pretzels and pickles. For Lena's effortless looking gate and perky ponytail which made me smile and keep running. For Tino's good sense to listen to his body. For Amy's kind ear, Allison & Veronica's leadership and organizational skills. For Santosh's donation of a PowerBar. For Jonathan's water stop. For all the money we've raised. And awareness. And hope we've created.

And thanks, Switzer As, for slowing down a bit for me at the end. And thank you, Craig's unreasonable ego, for letting me take the extra walk intervals I needed. I've come to the very real conclusion that the ego is an asshole. Sorry about the language. I was starting to beat myself up. Why? Because I walked a few more minutes than planned? But this event is not about me. I will strive to adhere to one of my favorites of the Four Agreements of Don Miguel Ruiz, Always Do Your Best. How can you be disappointed if you've done your best?

I will leave you with two things. First, a movie we should see. We'll relate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MufrX254PQc

And second, I listened, truly listened to a song I had been aware of your a couple of years but never really paid attention to. With my day being a mixture of accomplishment, fatigue, frustration and expectation, the lyrics really resonated. I will be present, releasing the expectation of outcome and watch the story unfold, grateful, fascinated.

Listening to this again, I admit I cried.

"I am unwritten, can't read my mind, I'm undefined
I'm just beginning, the pen's in my hand, ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

Oh, oh, oh

I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines
We've been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can't live that way

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten
The rest is still unwritten
The rest is still unwritten

Oh, yeah, yeah"

Here is a version of Natasha Bedingfield's song being done as a duet with Esmee Denters, an 18 girl from Holland--she's amazing.



Thank you for being part of my story.

The rest is still unwritten...


Gotta run-
Craig

mile high long, not so winding road.

Welcome back, after my day-long break from driving. I've been staying with my friend Ginny and her husband Greg in Wheat Ridge, CO. It's been great seeing Ginny after a several year absence of communication. Neither of us was really sure what happened to create the gap, but it was probably an email change/move issue which caused it. She did a similar four month return to the East Coast five years ago, before returning to her home out west.

It's scary how much of our lives are kept in electronic format. With cell phones and computers, I've lost my capacity to remember phone numbers, addresses and emails. One lost phone or computer crash and you can be in a pickle, losing touch with people, sometimes for good. Thank you, Google, for reacquainting the masses.

For some backstory, Ginny was the second person to reach out and find me through Google this year. She emailed my brother who just happened to know a certain basement I was residing in. The other was a friend from the Comet days, who found me through Google/AIDS/LifeCycle. I think both had thought that I might have croaked, since a quiet, non-communicative Craig is not the Craig anyone knows. I also reconnected with my friend, Synthia, who I had been at the Barn Theatre with back in 1990. She, too had thought I might have croaked. No such thing--healthy as a horse with lovehandles.

It's great to reestablish a connection and have it be slipped easily into, like a comfortable cardigan. There have definitely been people I have reconnected with which have not been easy, people who have either changed so much or not at all, where you find yourself stammering for things to say. Not so Ginny or Syn, it was as if a single conversation had just had a five year gap, was picked right back up, all shared history and similar strange senses of humor. Some friendships fade, others not even time can alter. Those are the friends that are family, they define you.

I'd thought about Ginny quite a bit on this trip, since it was in 1990 that she and I did a four month, 15,000 mile cross-country treck of self-discovery, architecture, and friends' free places to stay. In Arkansas, I believe, we went to the first Wal-Mart where we were waited on by a midget, a giant and a one armed man. Made me applaud their hiring practices and wonder if they hired from the circus in the off-season.

Wow! No lightning! I was sure I'd be smote after that one...

Ginny and Greg have been the consummate hosts, treating me like a king, showing me around Denver and its environs, their friends and their lives. They graciously opened their home to me and my handful of a dog, even though they have two cats who are terrified of Fugee. Fugee just becomes a quivering catatonic around them, pointing and shaking, as if to say, "Don't you SEE them? Right there, under the bed?!? What should we do? (Shiver...) Chase them? Eat them? Launch them into the air with our noses like Happy Cat? Come on, use your opposable thumbs! Get them!" (Shiver, quiver.)

Fugee did pass the day and a half without feline incident, even when left alone with them for almost six hours. To his discredit, he did pass half a day eating half a box of See's candy. He loves him some chocolate-like the time he ate half a chocolate cake in San Francisco. Was pretty concerned because of the chocolate vs. dog horror stories you hear, but he was the dog, after all, who had opened the refrigerator with his paw and devoured an entire 14 pound turkey, bones and all. The only side effect of the chocolate cake was a lingering stench which went away in a few hours. I thought it was just a new brand of his particularly noxious gas. Come to find out three weeks later when taking down the Christmas tree that he had actually had experienced violent, explosive diarrhea, which he fastidiously covered up with the Christmas tree skirt. So thoughtful and tidy, he.

Just have to relate a quick tale of a strange occurrence in Nebraska. I stopped to eat something at a saloon type establishment near the Colorado border--it was called Whiskey Creek. The lot was largely empty except for a few locals, who from the tone of conversations, were having post-holidays catch up meals. I had a steak (which made me feel pretty sick-may not be tolerating meat so well anymore...) paid up and went back to the truck. I had parked in a far corner in the lot, no vehicle on one side, the other, a vehicle about a half a space away. My truck didn't stick out of the allotted space, didn't block traffic, wasn't handicapped assigned--wasn't even particularly close to the restaurant.

I got in the cab and saw a note under the wiper which cheerfully read, "Ass Holes (sic) like you should take the bus. Fuck you." Printed on the back of a receipt sporting a huge smiley face and a "THANK YOU! Missy!!"

Huh.

I parked where I was supposed to, wasn't near anyone, hadn't cut anyone off. What caused this tirade of anger? Did they hate all trucks? Had a Budget truck run over Patches, their family pooch? I wanted to get out my red pen and grade it as "C minus --lacks clarity, where are you going with this?"

Normally I have a very thick skin, but this really was stuck in my craw, festering like a thing which, well, festers. What did I do?

You see, I don't care if people think I'm eccentric, off beat, risky, hard to fathom--hell, family, friends and myself included put me in that category at times. But inconsiderate, thoughtless, selfish? These things really concern me. I obsessed over this incident for the rest of the five hour trip from Nebraska to Denver.

At first, I just wanted to hate Nebraskans. That's certainly not fair. All of them had been lovely to me, except my lone "Fuck you." Then I fell into the mindset of "If this is the kind of event that sets you off, gutless, nameless hater-person, you must have a pretty great life! Making events where there are none--get a real issue!"

No, that wasn't it, either.

Then I looked at it from a different, more compassionate manner. I thought, "Wow. If this sort of event, whatever it was, sets you into rage induced note-writing, over one of Missy's precious smiley faces, much of life must be an upsetting and joyless thing." That stinks. Life isn't supposed to be an uphill battle, one alone against the buffoons. We're all just doing our best, each in our own dream or reality. Don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, thank you, Don Ruiz Miguel. I hope their day got better.

Today, I'm off to Salt Lake City Motel 6, via Laramie, Wyoming, and the beautiful high plains, Sioux country. I've been fortunate with weather, but today, i will have 80- to 100- mph cross winds for the first 100 miles, then the same velocity headwinds for about 450 miles. Now THAT is fun in a 10' box truck--the epitome of aerodynamics.

So that's it from Colorado. Keep on truckin'.