Marathon Update: Week 7
Hello, My Life's People!
For this week's update, there are two things I'd like to say: 1) it's hot, and 2) no, really, it's HOT! Whatever part of the country you're in, it seems we have this in common. So perhaps you can well imagine that when someone says to you, "...and now we're going to run 8 miles," you want to laugh, or cry, or possibly even hose that person down as you pull the back of their shorts over their head and set their car on fire. Yes. Perhaps you know.
But run we did, through Griffith Park toward Toluca Lake on Sunday. And everyone was a trouper. Even the clouds of gnats (ah, summer) that we'd run through and occasionally accidently swallow to their death as we tried to sneak a breath. Why, no kidding, this was an unparalleled marriage of nature and human. Walt Whitman might write it like this:
'Sort me for Nature's sake,
Souveneirs of summer, gather the welcome signs,
the elastic air...
the smoggy haze, the clinging smoke of wildfires,
the lingering flies searching out the horse poop all around
yum, a warble of joy
Thou, Soul, unloosen'd-- the restlessness after I know not what;
Come! let us lag here no longer-- let us be up and away
Before I hurt myself or someone else!'
Okay, so he didn't write that. But really, folks, the 'icky' was put in 'sticky;' it was hot. Heat stroke hot. So hot I don't remember a thing about the run. I think my right knee hurt, but I was in a version of a coma by the time I threw myself in a cold tub upon getting home. I vaguely recall thinking, "What is a knee for, really?" just before speaking in tongues.
One thing I do remember, though, pretty clearly. At a water stop around mile 5 was a gentleman who said, "Thank you," after I thanked him for the nectar of the gods he had set up there, which I was guzzling. He went on to tell my running partners and I that, living with AIDS, he'd been the beneficiary of AIDS Project Los Angeles' services for several years, and that the quality of his life wouldn't have been possible without the money that is raised and donated each year, most particularly by the folks taking on these marathon challenges each year, as he put it. I swallowed a gnat and got over myself. I was brought back to what we're really up to, and to what is at stake.
We are living in a world where it often seems that more people will die tomorrow at each other's hands than will live because of them. We are confronted with the world's 'problems' every day, increasingly so, it seems, and on top of it we have those of our own. And so I use this moment in which I've got your attention to thank you for even giving this matter that, whether you've chosen to donate to APLA on my behalf or not. Here you are, reading, and lending your awareness even in spite of the many 'problems' calling for your attention. Even that degree of generosity has it's own kind of ripple effect in the world, don't think it doesn't. Whitman would like that, as I do:
'I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.
I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself, before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?'
--Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road," [1900]
Thank you for who you are, no matter what,
Danielle D.
P.S.: Feel free to please foward this email to anyone you think might appreciate an opportunity to make a difference. As ever, to learn more, you can go to www.aidsmarathon.com, and after reading, you can enter my Runner #4492, and make a tax-deductible contribution in any amount, should you choose to do so. You can also click directly on the link below, or call me directly to discuss it: 323.828.2040. And as always, my deep thanks to those who've already taken this step. You are an inspiration.
Comments