Noisy Room Full of Silence

happy rainy rainy day ...

2011-01-05T08:06:00.002-08:00

Howdy peoples ... I am opting for pictures over words for the next bit. Going to give 'er a good try at least. You can find them HERE (365.2011) or same destination but another way in > www.traceyfalk.com if you are so inclined!

peace,
t.

condensed

2010-12-28T14:17:00.009-08:00

Five years of Flickr smushed into 4 minutes. Ready, set ...

I love week-long Christmas holidays. Ample time to catch your breath, spend a few guilt-free mornings not pressuring yourself to Get Up Early and Be Productive, but, and, still time to write, to attempt to make plans for another year's go around of life. My 2011 plans begin with number 180. Every action has an opposite, yes? An opposite action that I assume would then lead to an opposite result? Kind of like Jim Carey in Yes Man, he starts saying Yes to everything and radical Otherness occurs. Sometimes it's easy to see what action needs to be replaced with it's opposite, sometimes the discernment is tricky, what goes, what stays, what serves you, what masters you? Imagine what would happen if in any area of life where you feel discomfort, where you think change would be helpful, you began to do exactly the opposite of your instinctual behaviour? Feel like yelling at the driver behind you? Wish them peace and a good day instead. Prone to cluttering? Immediately put things away. Tired and lethargic? Choose activity over rest. Don't think you can run? Then run ... or walk or crawl or shuffle. Home feels like a prison? Then leave it and go Anywhere. Can't seem to save money? Then, well, stop spending it. Yes. This seems simplistic, for real, c'mon, we are much more complicated than that and there are layers of psyche to dig through to find out where the instinctual behaviour even came from before we can make a change, aren't there? I have spent years reading books and digging around in my head and while none of this has been a waste of time, none of it, either, has had quite the same impact as simply making a choice to do what doesn't feel natural and keeping on doing it until it does. Change feels wrong. Doing the opposite feels wrong. But sometimes it pays to turn off our inner Freud, our years of reading Self Help Literature, and simply decide, in every minute Yes or No, This or That. And to accept our choice, commit to our choice, knowing its result, whatever it is. What is the result you want? What action yields that result? Yes or No, This or That. Change is, at its root, a matter of choice. Life is not magic, it doesn't come from wishing and dreaming, it comes from making choices. Either you stay the course and become content with what is, making What Is the best it can be, or you turn 180 degrees, keep walking through the awkward, through the initial pain and resistance and you move to a different result. My 2011? There are a few big Stay the Courses and there are a few big 180's and there are a whole lot of little things along the way that will need to be Yes'd or No'd. Bring it.

to be ran

2010-12-21T18:24:00.008-08:00

It's been 119 days since I last ran. And in the last 185 days I only ran that one time - Aug 24 - for 1.5 km (i heart Runkeeper). So I don't think that really counts.

May 2, 2010 I finished a half marathon. 21km of slowness but I managed to finish 2 hours and 36 minutes after I had started. Thing being, however, I made one bad over-extending-myself decision while training and when all was said and done found myself with my arse planted on the sofa, injured. And this is where I stayed, it would seem, for the last 6 months. While I also went back to full-time computer work. And found myself becoming abominably out of shape and far-too-often reaching for the "comfy clothes" (a size looser please!)

Prior to that 1/2 I'd had 4 months of run training which was preceded by 2 months of nearly every-day hot Bikram yoga-ing which was preceded by a year of somewhat-regular 5 to 10k runs. Needless to say, I was in the best shape this non-athlete had ever been in.

Distant memory of a not-so-distant time. Alas, enough eventually becomes enough. My ass needed a challenge. And my sofa needed a breather. So I signed up to run the half again last week. Stupid? If it was so hard last time I can't imagine what I'm in for this time, starting from this place. Hopped back on the treadmill today for a barely-running 2km. So it begins. Race day is May 1, training, following Jeff Galloway's plan, officially begins Jan 4.

Apparently our bodies remember distance running and most people say their second time running a long race is easier and typically done with less training than the first time round. I can only hope my body remembers running with the same fondness it remembers chocolate.

This is my gym. Until as of 4:30pm this afternoon I hadn't stepped foot in this room since about April. Frick.

And oh, Robyn is my running soundtrack this time around. Robyn is awesome. Makes me laugh and dance at the same time. Perfect running music.

Like This:

And This (stupid commercials):

Peace and love and Christmas Blessings to you all.
T.

now

2010-10-21T23:13:00.003-07:00

lights made out of string and glue. hair that dries by itself. cupcakes in the fridge ready for a work debrief. yoga and happy skin. rain tapping out a song on the window. neighbour tapping out a song on the floor up above. jonathan writing of freedom. geneen writing about women food and god. ten seasons worth of friends. lobsters and breaks and such things.

i had 11 plants but 2 have died. drowned. i am not forgetting i am remembering too much.

Maria Taylor, Song Beneath the Song

Peace love deep and easy breath,
T.

92/365

2010-04-02T12:24:00.006-07:00

icy cold rain and blustery-ness outside, it's a coffee, candles, conversation, nap sort of day. and a concert sort of day. patty griffin tonight. patty griffin is my standby, my fallback, the person i listen to when i don't know what to listen to because i never don't like patty griffin, she's classic and perfect and full of stories. thrilled to see her live.

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Another Neil Halstead ...

91/365

2010-04-01T09:21:00.004-07:00

an old film picture. need to dig out the film cameras again, grainy goodness. am post yoga feeling like a nap but there is work to do and that could be disastrous. it's been a runless week in preparation / preservation for 20km Saturday morning. i know I can do it, sheer force of will if nothing else, that doesn't stop the stomach from turning over a bit though. 1km shy of the final 21, it's close to getting done, run walk or crawl. go figure.
peace on your thursday all, t.

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The Weepies, "Can't Go Back Now". Overlook the muppets please, the muppets are mildly disturbing.

89/365

2010-03-30T08:32:00.050-07:00

up to yoga long before the sun and the cars. but the mind, today in the heat the mind gives the body no grace and it fights, it is a tirade of wants, shouldhavenevers, howtobedifferents, howtocatchups, it is circling and circling and drags the body along, the body - so full too of its own memory, need for change, longing - the mind drags it and wins this round - watching as the body stops fighting, slows, cries itself out, saltwater sweat and tears, letting.

and then the fight slides away somewhere else, you settle back to just the normal fits and starts and you go you take a shower drink a coffee poach some eggs.

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Beck, "Guess I'm Doing Fine", Sea Change. Live.