Fly With Runner's High
I have been both a recreational and professional runner, and I think that it is very important to be both because no one can be on an elite pace for a consecutive ten years; alternating between elite and recreational is really important. At the same time, it is also important to admit which type of running that you’re doing for a particular race. This fall, in lieu of my races being canceled, I ran a half on the track and recorded the entire thing on camera. However, I decided my time was fast and can be a secret, and so can the video. Some of every athlete’s best work happens in practice, sometimes it’s controversial to post certain workouts and times which you run well. For instance, I like to be in a dead sprit after a long run to see how fast I can go, and sometimes it is faster than lightning. I love the feeling of letting myself fly. Letting yourself fly, after a workout does not give you the glory running that fast in a race would, but it feels like inexplicable magic. It is so important to have days where you just sprint down the hill with your arms out to your sides like wings, moving as swiftly as possible, or those days where you forget your watch and heart rate whilst sprinting as fast as your legs let you move! Shoulders back, hands loose, keep the stride long, springing feet, arms out in the air, flying down the hill. Let yourself fly, have runner’s high, and be enthralled in every stride; love running.
Happy Running!
Stemming from the conversation above relating the differences between being recreational and elite, different times for different things and being both, it corresponds with actualities in life. There’s a time to be serious and a time to be recreational. I have helped friends write vows, eulogies, love poems, greeting cards, or have wine and poetry nights. For that reason, I am going to share this poem, I Love You. A poem for a friend, putting thoughts into words and verse, regarding the matter of gardening. We enjoy working together, putting thoughts and ideas into coherent and eloquent language. Sometimes, even with the grotesque conversation of certain topics, it is important to have a beautiful basis to grow from which poetry may provide on occasion. Figurative language and hyperbole, help people discuss matters in writing. I helped a friend in silence express raw emotion through writing poetry, which may be cliché; very nice nonetheless. When someone you love needs to hear something nice, it can be helpful to write a lovely poem, and build spiritually from that literature. Other times, it’s okay that someone may not be eloquent, but that is who they are, not to be taken personally when they just need to vent without a filter, and accepting them as a member of the group is important too. Here we vent about gardening extravagant perennials that take years to thrive, ‘It’s you and me, and all the flowers’. Mountains have spirits, and plants have spirits too.
You’ll see how we took three experiences, and wrote romantic couplets about the experiences. Each line is in iambic pentameter, which means ten syllables each. The first line of iambic pentameter is a topic sentence and the second is elaborating on that topic, with a rhyme scheme for the purpose of fluidity. Having a structure to a poem, helps to break down the topics into a coherent sequence. Writing poetry is therapeutic, because having a sequence to depict an experience brings out strong emotion that may need help coming out of the amygdala part of your brain. Writing poetry helps take memories that are stuck in the amygdala, and bring them out to be fruitful expressions. Gorgeous poetry can be conceived using special poetic formulas, like iambic pentameter, and specific rhyme schemes; like solving a puzzle. It may be helpful to write a poem and color some pictures or drawings around the poem. Everyone’s different and has something valid to contribute in terms of expressing powerful emotion. One may be the poem writer, and the other may be the poem discusser; both equivalent contributors to expression and growth in a relationship. For poetry and wine nights, we have everyone at our event write one romantic couplet, and then have a corresponding painting, and it’s a really beautiful activity; excellent idea for a Christmas gift too. One time for an event in Kennebunkport, I painted a canvas red, and then used gold leaf to design a heron, and wrote a pretty poem in cursive underneath the painting. We used to do so many of these little events in Kennebunkport and Portland on weekends. I could just write a novel about writing a poem with one stanza, so here is I Love You….
I Love You
I believe all three of them have spirits.
Little angel voices sing, I hear it.
One, came from lust so blissfully early.
They flew away with god as a birdie.
Two, was intelligent and magical.
The product of something romantical.
Three, conceived to heal our heartbreak with love;
as one and two, flew away as a dove.
Always around us, particles of light.
Surrounding my tears in roses of white.
It is hard to grow certain plants, but once you do it is so totally worth it. It took me two years to get my moon flower garden in full bloom. I have a lot of roses, sunflowers and lavender plants every year too. Succulents with baby succulents. My aunt has a very nice garden too, she was featured in a magazine for the best gardens in Penfield/Rochester/NY, which is pretty outstanding. In her garden there are two corgis and their toy corgi running around all the time, they might get another toy corgi to be extra cute with one for each. Her corgis are really cute when they wrestle, and then play with their toy corgi who looks just like them, just like my chihuahuas playing. I enjoy a beautiful garden, when I see one.
Listening to all that is Taylor Davis yesterday, I decided to play her version of My Heart Will Go On. She is such a fabulous composer and very generous to make all of her sheet music available on her website. I feel like a child in a candy shop looking at all of her sheet music, she is just giving it away! I’m a happy lady after finding all of her websites, with everything a violinist could ever dream of playing. http://mnot.es/2gO4yZy
I feel like I have been living under a rock, never watching these music videos. I have to tell you, The Piano Guys are putting me in such a good mood. It just makes me smile watching all of these videos. This is making me want to play a solo in a Free People dress, and have a videographer for the day. I’m going to compose a variation of Devil’s Trill for a video this year, and find a pretty dress to match my piece with a nice new red lipstick!! I miss looking pretty and playing pretty classical music. Long loose curls, or double waterfall braids with a curled pinned bun is the question?… This is happening near my favorite oversized fireplace, alongside ginormous stone steps, it’ll be everything that I want it to be; perhaps I’ll have some flowers for ambiance. How fun?! Not that I am throwing away the math PhD, but there is an entire new market in classical music outside of orchestra and ballet theatre, that was not there for me ten years ago. I did an entire project on Vanessa Mae when I was younger, because I loved how she would make the music videos with her pieces; it was revolutionary (She is like Britney Spears for the violin, and also an Olympian). Now, it is so prominent and doable for a large community of musicians to showcase years of hard work in videos. I also did an entire project on Orpheus and Eurydice, because I love music in Greek mythology… I always tell my aunt in NYC to make her students do music videos because they have all the luxuriously nice cameras to do it like us professionals, but none of them ever want to which is really disappointing; maybe next year, but probably not (those kiddos are so pretentious, like me when I order sushi). :) You just find a way to balance different parts of who you are and diffuse them all into one successful lifestyle. I love my orchestra and classical ballets, and it really is a lifelong endeavor, finding little pockets of time to stay valid.