This photo may not make sense to everyone.
And that's fine. Why, exactly, should everything make sense?
What, you might ask, am I doing in this photo?
Why, I'm wearing goggles and eating shortbread. Obviously. Sheesh.
It is February 13th, two thousand eleven.
I turned 39 two days ago.
I'm in remission.
I'm on maintenance.
I only have one more dose of Prednisone tomorrow and then I'm free of it for a month. And, aside from some scratchiness, it doesn't seem to have squeezed my throat.
Which is good, because I have a five-day audiobook job this week.
OK, the following list is first and foremost for me. Not as inspiration, because I already accomplished the list.
But as a turn-and-look-around:
When my dad was dying of cancer, N and Lugnut and I moved to LA and lived with a friend there. To be closer to dad. When we weren't visiting him in Santa Barbara, we lived a somewhat regular life on Sierra Bonita Avenue, just south of the Hollywood Hills.
Whenever I could, I would take Lugnut and we'd run up a dry sand-dirt path in Runyon Canyon: the eastern ridge run, for those who know it. The hard one.
The dog, of course, made me and everyone else look bad. But that's his pride.
I tried to keep a running pace the whole time.
There are three pitches that are steeper than the rest, scrabbly runnels of particulate tan soil that don't give much traction, seemingly straight up the side of the ridge, seventy feet or so each, the next a little shittier than the last.
The last one tops out at a survey spike buried in the hilltop. When you get to that spike, if you feel like you're gonna puke, you've done it right.
Then you do it: the turn-and-look-around.
Hands on hips. Eyes scrunched against the sun, running sweat, and the pain of breathing. You turn slowly around, to face south.
LA worms under the smog below you, in every direction. The frying pan of Museum Mile and Hancock Park, the little zits of skyscrapers undulating between downtown's pencil-cup of buildings to the left, along the spine of Wilshire, to the glass Legos of Century City, and off into the deeper murk of ocean-meets-pollution resting on Santa Monica like am expensive blouse on a coked-out Malibu teen.
LA's bits and pieces just lay there: the Cahuenga Pass a little behind to your left, two traffic copters telling the poor bastards they aren't moving.
LA. Wide and flat and beneath you. Beneath you. Because you've run the hell up one of her ribs and you were on top. The Hollywood sign, off your left shoulder, can kiss your ass. You're up there.
That's a turn-and-look-around.
Here's mine.
This week I:
Ran 12 miles--cumulatively.
Recorded three VO jobs.
Swam 1.13 miles--all at once.
Had a bunch of auditions.
Spun 90 minutes.
Attended four union meetings.
Did TRX training Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Got Vincristine in the vein.
Saw an expressionist Korean Film.
Took four days of Pred.
Didn't die.
Turned 39.
This is not to gloat. This is not to mock whatever you did this week...I mean, I might, if I knew; but that's not my point.
This is just to lay it out. So I can stand over it.
Hands on hips, breath heaving. Squinting into the smog.
I miss Lugnut, but if I close my eyes, I can hear him panting, next to me.
Because we made it to the top. Kept running.
Got there. One more time.
