This morning I’m drinking Allegro Organic Breakfast Blend – Light Roast.   A pleasant cup, I will say that it is relatively indistinct….. the “gray man” in a room full of light roasts.   It’s good, available at Whole Foods, and gets the day going.  Maybe my coffee pallet – like my writing – has lost some of its edge over the last year.  Or maybe this is just a good but unexceptional cup of coffee.

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Been over a year since the last Sunday Morning Light Roast.  Lots has happened, but here I am, doing the same thing.  At the risk of sounding cliche: much has changed, but much remains the same.   As it pertains to the blog, my ability to articulate thoughts into words and then onto paper has not progressed.   Maybe it’s even regressed.  The writing muscle is weak, atrophied from a lack of exercise.    

I’ve had several posts in the last six months, some travelogue type entries and a few book reviews.   I have another book review in the works, but it is bogged down somewhere around 40% complete.   And I have about 10 other posts that are in various stages of incompletion.    With these posts, I’ve found that there seems to be a hump somewhere around the 60% point, and I often stall out before getting over it. 

Time outside of work is the scarce resource; since returning from India I don’t get nearly as much time to myself.  Evenings are spent with the family, and then straight to bed.   I get an hour or so in the mornings, and  I tend to prioritize the time toward reading.  My daily meditation practice, which was very steady while in India and for about a month after getting home, has fallen into inconsistency.  And I’m running again (more on this below), so there’s  another 4-5 hrs a week that’s spoken for.   Writing just doesn’t make the cut line. 

But it’s worth keeping the blog alive, even if on life support.   Every now and then I have a strong surge of inspiration and ideas, but it’s never when I’m sitting down at the keyboard.  It’s usually when I’m running, or in the car, or reading; and by the time I open the word processor (do people still use that term?) its gone.   Just gotta synch up the creative moments to coincide with when I’m sitting down to write.  Stephen King says nicotine and alcohol helped him a lot.  Steven Pressfield argues for harsh self-discipline as the method to break through writer’s block and the lulls in creativity and inspiration.   Put in the time, and the muse will come.   As enticing as the drugs-and-alcohol approach sounds,  I’ll go ahead and give self-discipline a try first.

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In order to resuscitate this thing, I’ll hit a few easy topics this morning: books and running.  Then we’ll see where that takes us….

Books I’m reading now:  Once an Eagle, by Anton Myrer; The Way of Zen, by Alan Watts, Road to Character, by David Brooks; and The Order of Time, by Carlo Rovelli.  Although I’m not halfway done with any of them, I’ll write a few sentences about what I think so far….a kind of In-Progress Review.  

Once an Eagle:  Reading this one as part of an online reading group, and I am lagging way behind the group.   I’m about  350 pages into this 1300 page behemoth.  And only in the last 75 pages has it started to grab me.  The first 250 pages or so were to me largely uninteresting, full of black and white characters and antiquated dialogue.  It’s now starting to get good.  More to follow on this one. 

Road to Character:  The intro was great, but it’s lost some steam since then.  The intro was a stimulating discussion about  Adam I vs Adam II, which are metaphors for two life-motivations that  pervade humanity (the drive to succeed in the world vs the drive to be a good person).  The rest of the book is divided into case study chapters that examine individuals and how their lives provide us examples of some different aspects of “character.”  I’m only three case studies deep,  but to me it has lost it’s initial appeal.  After the intro, it seems to be just a bunch of short biographies that loosely adhere to the books through-line.  I guess I expected more discussion about what character entails, with a few cases woven in to support; but so far its been heavy on the cases, and relatively light on character discussion.    But I’ll trudge on…..

Way of Zen:  This one’s a bit of a tough read.    I am just now starting the Zen part, after a pretty long scene setter that discusses Eastern worldviews and Zen’s influences (Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism).  Watts has an exceptional command of the English language and is very articulate, but the concepts are – and he admits this repeatedly through the book – often beyond the ability of words to convey.  He takes on a hard task: explaining eastern concepts and ideas in western terms.  The difficulty goes way beyond incongruities in language; eastern philosophies also have a very different worldview.  As Watts states: “the difficulty of making equations and comparisons between Eastern and Western ideas is that the two worlds do not start with the same assumptions and premises” (p. 72).   Nonetheless, I think this book is a good exercise in trying to understand these differences, and hopefully as I get deeper, develop a basic understanding of Zen.

The Order of Time: Like Watts, Rovelli is taking an uber-complex topic – this one in the realm of theoretical physics – and writing it for the every-man.   Rovelli is a master at explaining (almost) unexplainable concepts in ways that I can (almost) grasp.  But make no mistake about it: this one’s a mind-bender.   Trying to conceive of time differently than we perceive it is a hard lift intellectually, and essentially breaks apart our basic understanding of reality.   For example, here’s a teaser just to show what I’m talking about:  Rovelli explains and shows that the concept of “now” or “the present,” is not just a point in time, but also a point in space.  So what that means is that you cannot logically ask “what is going on right now, somewhere else?”…because there is no right now somewhere else that coincides with right now right here.   In our world the differences between nows are small enough to be unnoticeable and inconsequential, but as you get out to larger interplanetary distances, they matter.   The present expands as distance between two points expands.

I’ve read other similar books on the theories behind how the universe works, and they have a tendency to get bogged down with math, equations, or science mumbo.   So far this one has avoided that pitfall.  In fact, in talking about one of the most fundamental but difficult things that we perceive about existence – time – Rovelli manages to do so almost completely without using equations (there is one very simple math equation in the book, which is necessary and central to his discussion). So although after reading this you still may struggle to comprehend the nature of time, that’s your fault, not Rovelli’s. 

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So….what else is new?  The hip is doing well, after a setback in October with an acute aggravation (softball injury), it seems to be back on track.   Even though the October injury healed quickly, it was bad enough to that it spurred me to get another MRI and consult an ortho about possible surgery.  I wanted to make a deliberate decision:  either do it (surgery) this year, or live with it and stop waffling.   I took in info from many sources – the ortho, my physical therapist, other folks with similar injuries, but most of all my body – and decided to decline surgery…again.   Bottom line is that there is a lot of uncertainty and risk with the surgical options at this point, and my quality of life and ability to do things I want is still very acceptable.   In other words, it’s not bad enough yet to warrant them sticking hardware in my joint.

I am running again somewhat regularly.  3-4 times a week totalling 20-25 miles.  There is some low-level pain, but it’s subdued enough that I still enjoy the runs.  It seems to be getting better over time.  I’m back on a physical therapy and strengthening program too, and taking a few supplements.  Another thing that seems to have been a game-changer:  this past summer I ditched running shoes completely for sandals.  I had been occasionally running in sandals for a few years, but mostly as a once-a-week supplement to my training program.  This past summer, after a couple bad runs in shoes, I decided to give the sandals-only approach a try, and it’s been great.   I’d venture to say it has helped my hip more than any other factor.   

Yesterday I raced a local 8 mile trail race.  First race in almost 18 months.    I ran well, and came in 3rd place in a field of ~100 runners.  It was also the hardest I’ve run in a long time…..you generally don’t replicate race effort in training.   The hip was a non-factor during the race.  While it’s a bit tender right now – the morning after – it’s definitely not nearly as bad as it’s been after other races.

It’s exciting to be back in the game a bit, and I’m signed up for another one in three weeks.  Yesterday’s race was the first in a local series that progress in distance through the year, finishing with a 55 miler in Oct.   I’ll take em one race at a time, and see how the year goes.

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I don’t think I’ve posted anything about Collin since he was born last march.  He’s almost a year old now, his birthday is coming up this week.   Not too much I feel I need to say here….any dad with a son knows how it feels.   He started walking back in early Jan, and is now exploring and climbing all over stuff, and he likes wrestling and bluegrass music.  He’s also a wrecking ball.  He will turn a clean room inside out in a matter of minutes.