Notes on Letters

I wish I wrote more letters.

The art of letter-writing is endangered these days, and when you sift through archives of letters written 25, 50, 100 years ago, it seems as though language is elevated, thoughts are better articulated, and emotions are more strongly revealed. When I was 16 years old, a friend and I walked into an abandoned one-room shack in the middle of a field (yes, these things can happen when you live out in the country), and found a stash of curse-word-laced love notes written from one high school girl to her boyfriend, with whom she clearly had a child. My friend kept the love notes, and I bet they’re still tied up with a string in her closet somewhere. For years, my mother wrote letters to a soldier abroad whom she’d never met in real life. She still remembers his name, and wonders where he might be.

writing-a-letter

I find myself, every month or so, heading over to Letters of Note, an amazing compilation of letters from all walks of life that are at times hilarious, heartbreaking, stocked with wisdom, and mystifying. “To My Old Master,” an 1865 note from an emancipated slave responding to his old owner’s request to come back and work on his farm, is a work of beauty. I can only imagine the pleasure felt by the former slave when he politely requested that to even consider the offer, he would first require compensation of back wages + interest for both his and his wife’s years of servitude, plus a guarantee of a good education for his children. Even Tarantino can’t re-create that catharsis.

There’s a letter from poet Ted Hughes to his son Nick reminding him to embrace his childish self and live with passion, a letter from John Steinbeck assuring his college-aged son that being in love is a particularly beautiful thing, a letter from the creators of South Park describing in all-too-explicit detail to the MPAA what offensive jokes they took out and left in for the South Park movie, and my personal favorite, a letter from a screenwriter to MGM studios, asking for a job by way of describing all of the types of words he likes.

“I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave “V” words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty.”

But maybe my favorite corner of the Internet that’s filled with letters is the one that’s filled with my own. Years ago, I stumbled across FutureMe, a site that lets you write letters to yourself and then schedule delivery for any date in the future. I’ve received probably about 10 letters from myself since I was 15 years old, some sent just three weeks after I wrote them, others sent three years. More recently, I composed a letter in October 2010, two months before I graduated college, and sent it exactly one year into the future, to October 2011. The letter ended as such:

“Congrats on graduating, Alison. I hope you stick it out with that GPA– don’t fuck it up in this last semester. Stay friends with [X], [Y], [Z], and your housemates this year. Don’t let everyone go from college the way you did from high school. Try to keep ties alive, even if you don’t believe they care as much about you as you do them. You’re going to want to have friends to invite to your wedding, after all.

But most of all, I hope you’re kicking ass right now. I hope you’re financially stable, doing something you love, and happily in a relationship or alone, whichever suits you best. See you in a year!”

Try it. See how long you can stand to wait until you read the letter again, and send one off into the Internetsphere to float around for awhile and come back to you with your own reflections. You don’t even have to pay for postage.

On tornados and memories

Unless you’ve been hiding out in the corner of a windowless room without any Internet connection or friends, you’ve probably heard about the terrifying E4 tornado that struck Moore, OK, this week, pummeling two schools, a hospital, and countless homes such that a birds-eye-view of the place looks like one of my Sim Cities after I released an alien attack.

I always feel a pang of familiarity, however remote, toward those terrible photographs flashing across the news. When I was 8, a tornado ripped through my neighborhood in a giant, swirling green rainy wreck of a storm. The tornado was medium-strength, completely destroying about two dozen homes and damaging 500 more, and luckily producing no casualties — but to this day, I can still recall the stories that later emerged when we all came walking out of our homes, front doors swung wide open, staring at our neighbors in dazed confusion as we surveyed the damage. There was the lady in a nearby neighborhood who hid in the cupboard underneath her stairs as her house crumbled around her. There was my friend Libby who lived up the street, whose home had its second story and attic ripped off in the wind, flooding her entire first floor and taking every personal possession her family ever had. There was Kate, who told me about the entire back porch she saw fly past her living room window in what had to have been one of the more surreal things she’ll ever see in her life.

A street in my neighborhood after the storm.

A street in my neighborhood after the storm.

For years — seriously, years – after the tornado, I was deathly terrified of wind and storms. My ritual whenever one descended on our home was to hide in my bedroom, sheets and comforter actually pulled over my head, with all of the lights on and the radio blasting to drown out the claps of thunder and the whistle of the wind. I would hum or sing loudly and just hover in a ball in my makeshift tent. My bed at the time was in the center of my room; when, several years later, I re-arranged and moved it next to my window, I considered the decision a true feat of courage on my part.

But what I find most interesting about that tornado, and that night, is the sheer amount of detail that’s stuck nestled in my brain, seemingly for good. That evening, my elementary school was hosting a Roller Skate Night in town, and Dad and I were supposed to pick up my friend who lived up the street. Had we followed through with that plan, we would have been on the road in the exact path of the tornado right when it touched ground — but, with the weather as terrible as it was, my parents canned the plan and kept me at home for the night.

There was the game of Stratego that my sister and I were playing in the basement, as the windows started to vibrate and we noticed our playing pieces were falling over without our touch. There was the moment that she and I raced up the stairs to seek comfort from our parents just as they were racing down them to push us underneath a table in our ground-level basement, as far from the window as possible. There was my father, rushing over to put back in the windows when they blew into the room, as the drop ceiling panels started clattering to the floor, and me screaming at him to stay underneath the table, with all of the command that an 8-year-old can muster. There was the noise — the roaring, rushing wind that you had to shout to be heard over. There was the walk through the house afterwards, where every window had blown in, furniture was ruined, and the thick arm of a tree had fallen into my sister’s bedroom, smashing her windows and rendering the place unlivable for a number of weeks. I can still remember my mother telling me that she knew something was wrong when her ears started popping. I can still see her eyes, wide and worried, as she stopped Claire and I mid-way up the stairs and told us to turn back around and march right back down to the basement.

May 8, 2008 Tornado - 27

May 8, 2008 Tornado - 7

How have so many banal details — Roller Skate Night, that game of Stratego, Dad’s foolhardy decision to run over to the windows — stayed cozied away in my brain? Without even really realizing it, my mind just stored away all of the minutiae associated with what turned out to be a watershed event in my young life. I can still draw up the image in my mind and feel the same sense of panic I felt in those seconds when it became plainly obvious that the tornado was making its way right past our house, and we were at the mercy of its path.

Nobody in Moore, or Joplin, or anywhere that’s victim to a storm like that, will ever forget the banal details of every second leading up to the moment the tornado touched, or in the moments after. My heart goes out to Moore, and the families who are searching for children in the rubble of an elementary school. I can only feel a fraction of their pain, and I hope they all can find tiny moments down the road that are still worth holding on to.

Scenes from the C&O

Somehow I’ve managed to live, at most, three miles from the Historic C&O Canal trail, and for the last three years, I’ve worked approximately 0.5 miles from the entrance at what-used-to-be Jack’s Boathouse (rest in peace, Jack’s!). Yet for whatever reason, despite this amazing proximity, I’ve never actually run or biked on the trail until this past Friday. I decided to attempt a 4-mile run — which is funny that I say “attempt,” considering I ran 13.1 miles less than a month ago and did that pretty alright. But something about post-half-marathon-training is much less invigorating than pre-half-marathon-training, and as a result I’ve devolved into some state where 3-4 miles has become, yet again, a daunting task. I’m trying really hard not to be appalled by that fact.

But at least this time, I had some really amazing scenery to keep me company whenever I had to slow to a walk (or stop to take pictures, which I conveniently chose to do every time I felt like I wouldn’t be able to run another inch).

cocanal2
cocanal3

cocanal4

The trail is quiet, shaded, and offers glimpses of the Potomac just to remind you that you aren’t completely lost in the middle of nowhere. It serves more or less as an idyllic cycling highway; I was one of just a handful of runners on the path, while everybody else was just getting started on their evening commute home. The only thing I could take issue with was an impending sense of claustrophobia the further I got on the trail — were I to need water, a bathroom, or a quick exit back into civilization, I really wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it without just turning around and running all the way back. Maybe I’ve been living in a city too long and I’m not capable of just being by myself in nature for more than twenty minutes. In which case, oomf. I should work on that.

cocanal

Something old, something new

Starting Fresh.

13photoI’ve thought a lot about what to do with this space in 2013, considering that, for the most part, my posts dropped off after I completed the Tough Mudder in December 2012. In so many, many ways, 2012 was a watershed year for me. It began with that piece of paper I stuck on my fridge titled “Goals for 2012” — Give more. Smile more. Forgive more quickly. That list, whose red and blue Sharpie words have nearly faded to grayscale, still hangs in my kitchen, but it means less now because for the most part, I’ve integrated all of those reminders into my daily existence. I don’t need to see them written down to remember to eat good food, to sleep 8 hours a night, to cook for friends, to read more, to work hard but know when to take a break.

In 2012, I broke out of a whole host of shells I’d been keeping myself in. I set, and exceeded, goals for myself. I let go of unhealthy relationships and forged new, wonderful ones. I started moving around every day, working up a sweat, and I started thinking harder about what I consume. I paid closer attention to the people who matter the most, and I paid closer attention to my own needs. I treated myself to a number of adventures, I watched the first of my college friends get married, and I traveled solo just for fun.

So where does that put me in 2013? I’ve been less inclined to write in here because rather than revelation after revelation, I’m instead simply deepening the roots I started putting in the ground last year. The craving for adventures continues unabated — in 2013 so far, I’ve Sweetlifed, skied, road-tripped, scavenger hunted, and half-marathoned. Later this summer, I’ll visit Charleston, go camping and white water rafting, see Paul McCartney in concert, spend a long weekend at the beach with a whole host of friends, and travel solo to San Francisco for a week of exploring – all before moving up to Cambridge, MA in the fall to start work on my Masters degree! I can’t begin to express how lucky I feel to be in this special time of life right now: that harried, busy, 20-something existence that’s all whirlwinds with friends, quiet nights when I want them, and an overstuffed calendar of pure awesome.

Simply put, the good times just keep on rolling.

Which brings me, in this ridiculously roundabout way, to where I’ve decided to take this blog. Kaleshot started out just as a record of my gym foibles and attempts at Zumba. To be sure, there will continue to be more of that, and in fact, I’m inspired to go try out some new variations of exercise just so I can report back.

But I also plan to spend more time on what I’m beginning to realize is my evolving philosophy — where I place my values, why I do what I do, what kind of person I want to be and am becoming. To that end, I’ve created 4 new concrete categories in which every post will be stored: Philosophy, Food, Fitness, and Fun. (And um, General, because WordPress won’t seem to let me delete that one.)

Regarding the first category, I am, I’ve realized, actively, in-this-very-moment in the midst of a process of immense self-discovery that began with that list on my fridge and has continued to mature and strengthen in the year and a half since. And I know what I’m shooting for: a good life, a big life, a life of peace and joy, a life of success and motivation, and a life of laughter and simplicity. How I get there is where this story starts.

Daily Workouts: Skinned Knee Edition

Huzzah! I survived my first running-related injury! It had to happen eventually, and now I can go ahead and get back to balancing properly when I run.

kennedycenter

See this path? It’s the running path that goes beside the Kennedy Center (on the left) with the Potomac River flanking it to the right. It’s pretty lovely when the sun is out.

black
And that? That’s what the path looks like when you’re running on it after the sun goes down. There are no lights at all, and even though there’s usually runners and bikers (with blinding lights attached to their handlebars) passing you on the path, being able to see the bumpily paved asphalt beneath your feet is pretty difficult by moonlight. Especially when you’re like me, and your eyes tend to stray upwards while you run because, I don’t know, stars are more exciting to look at than the road.

I was about 0.6 miles away from finishing up my five-mile run (in record time!) when I thought to myself as I approached the Kennedy Center portion of the path, “Man, it would REALLY suck to trip and fall here! I can just picture flying forward, my phone clattering across the asphalt, and dear God, what if I fall on my face? That would be so painful –” OOMPH.

Apparently thinking about falling leads one to actually fall. I knew there was a rule about this with water skiing, but I guess it applies to clumsily balanced people in general. Just as the thought crossed my mind, my toe caught on one of the slight raises in the asphalt caused by buckling over time, and I went flying forward. My phone flew from my hands and somehow survived skipping like a rock over the path (although it’s been acting up a bit since), and my left leg caught most of the fall.

photo (99)

Pardon the weird angle – my leg isn’t quite as funky-bendy-shaped as this picture would make it seem. But not too shabby for my first fall! My right knee has a minor scrape on it, but I’m mostly just excited that my face didn’t touch asphalt at any point. This, combined with burns around my ankle from my ski boots being too tight on Saturday, and a long cut running down my thumb after a wildly unsuccessful attempt at siphoning my homebrew into the bottling bucket (making beer is hard, y’all), has me in pretty weary shape at the moment – war wounds from all of my silly hobbies!

Anyways, the best part was that, with blood streaming down my leg, I had every reason to run as fast as possible to get back to the office, so I finished up my five miles at an average pace of a 9:14 mile, which was awesome! What was less awesome was the burning sensation running down my leg like I had just gotten a really bad carpet burn for the remainder of the evening. But what was even MORE awesome than that was NOT awesome was going straight from my run to the Iron Horse, to join fellow Casual Hoya fanatics in watching Georgetown beat UConn in two heart-stopping, need-blood-pressure-medicine overtimes.

Tonight will be an easy breezy three-miler to get me ready for nine miles that I plan to tackle on Saturday. Somewhere in there, I need to get back to weight lifting too, but you know, whatever. One thing at a time.

#ExerciseShaming

There are few things in life I’m worse at than exercising in the morning. I think, if I had to rank the Top 10 Things At Which I’m Awful, my inability to get out of bed at 6:30am (which is, by the way, a perfectly normal time to wake up in the Adult World) would fall somewhere in here:

  1. Feeding myself real dinners most nights of the week (unless you count cereal, Eggos, or a PB & J as an adequate dinner)
  2. Taking my clothes out of the dryer in any kind of reasonable time
  3. Buddying up socks before putting them in my sock drawer
  4. Running in the morning
  5. Resisting the urge to puppy-shop on PetFinder.com
  6. Checking my voicemail
  7. Remaining patient when my computer malfunctions

 

I’m going to save 8 through 10 for myself, because who needs to know so many things I suck at?

Anyways, I fully intended to go for a 5-mile run this morning before work. All of the elements were working in my favor: I’d gone to bed at 10:45pm, so I had plenty of rest. The mornings are starting a lot earlier now, so there was already some sun in the sky. The high today is 58 degrees, so basically perfect. And I have plans after work tonight, making squeezing in a run that much more difficult in the evening.

So, of course, I glanced at my clock, shook my head, and set the alarm for 7:30 like usual.

As a punishment to myself, I took 10 minutes at work this morning to browse through some beautiful J Crew swimsuits, which made me feel equal parts bad about not running, and absolutely stoked to find time to run later today. Because damn, I’m ready for summer – I even found myself browsing Dewey Beach house rentals yesterday.

Oh, right. It’s not even March yet.

Diversions: Searching for the Ski Free monster

Despite the more-than-slight throbbing in my right knee after my run on Thursday, I was excited to hit the slopes for the one and probably only time this winter with Xavier on Saturday. We got on the road around 6:45am and headed to Wintergreen Resort, a lovely little mountain in south-central Virginia that was probably about half the size and scariness of any mountain in the Adirondacks and further north, and one-third that of anything you’d find out west. Which is to say, absolutely perfect for me.

Xavier had never been skiing, and I’d only been skiing twice in the last eight-ish years, so we were basically uber-beginner and pretty-much-beginner fumbling around on the Green Dot slopes. As a result, my limited amount of wisdom – “Pizza! French fry! Ski parallel to the slope, not straight down it! Weight on your downhill ski! Don’t hit the small 3-year-old who’s clearly more advanced than you are!” – didn’t stretch too far, and it was more or less the blind leading the blind.

photo (97)Oh and also, we were awesome. After six+ hours of skiing (with a two-hour break in the middle for me to watch Georgetown crush the Orange), I can safely say that Xavier handles wipe-outs like a champion, and that I ski with the speed and balance of an arthritic grandmother carrying a basket of fruit on her head. I didn’t fall, which was kind of my only goal for the day, despite Xavier’s reassurances that picking up ungodly amounts of speed and careening into hills/slopes/spindly branches is actually pretty fun.

My attempt at a skiing glamour shot.

My attempt at a skiing glamour shot.

By the time the sun went down, the snow got icy, and the slopes cleared out to the point where we weren’t in imminent danger of running over a small child all the time, we kind of sort of had a handle on this skiing thing. It was a wonderfully exhausting way to spend a Saturday, and the resort, despite its sub-par burgers, was a pretty nice spot. Highlights of the day included Xavier sailing straight into a fenced-off kindergarten skiing class, watching people who were still years away from getting their drivers’ license take moguls like beasts, and getting in a few last runs in the evening when the moon was out and everything looked sparkly and white.

Yesterday, I had a consultation with a personal trainer, with whom I purchased two sessions through some obscure deal site, so I’m excited to devote some time with a trainer to strength training in the next few weeks. Today I’m knocking out three miles and some weights, and I’m on track for a nine-miler this weekend. I had my fun in the snow for 24 hours this past weekend, and now I’m fully ready for bathing suit season – bring on the sun!