Ready for "epic"

running means a lot to me. it's my drug, my escape, my happy place. without it holding me up the last couple of years, i'm not sure where i'd be.

and it's a strange sport, this running. i mean, what other sport has its elite athletes toe up on the same start line as amateur joes, weekend warriors and the virginally crowned couch-to-5Kers?

this weekend i will put the exclamation mark on what has been the absolute best 16 weeks of training i've ever gutted through by running the coveted chicago marathon. i'm stoked as hell as this will be the my first marathon since my st. louis letdown back in april, where i ended up injuring myself and shelved for six weeks.

this time i trained smarter. i didn't marry a chart, rather, i listened to my body and pushed it when i could, eased back when i had to, and most of all, i tried to remember that THIS SHIT IS FUN!!!!

and realize as i may that no one really gives a fuck how fast or how slow i run a marathon, the competitor within me is dead set on running sunday's race as fast as i can with all of the effort i can muster, no holding back. that's what running is about to me: seeing how far i can go, seeing what i -- as a mortal human fucking being -- can really push myself to do.

I CAN HARDLY WAIT!!!

my pops is coming to run it too. and so is one of my brothers-in-law. i hate to steal one of those kid-cliched interweb memes to describe the potential, but i cannot resist saying it's gonna be EPIC.

Tuning out the tunes

part of my running regimen has been taking one run a week and going without any music, no watch, no plan. just... walk out the door and...

run.

just fucking run.

the feeling i get from that is reminiscent of being a kid, when i didn't have a care in the world other than right now, present... time and space. takes me back to my primal roots. and it fucking feels fantastic.

but i never even considered doing that regularly. i thought once a week was enough... just to keep me grounded. any more than that and i just assumed i'd burn out.

then a couple of weeks ago i dropped (and broke) my zune. i had to send it off to get fixed, which left me mp3-less for a week and i... got scared.

sure i'd gone once a week without tunes, but every day? what if i got bored? what if i lost that feeling?

i never got bored. i never lost that feeling. in fact, i woke up! tuned in! felt and experienced the world around me! as it was happening!

- - -

yesterday i ran a race with 30,000 other people. THIRTY THOUSAND PEOPLE. it was an awesome sight, all of us packed together, a natural experience vaguely akin to pack running on the hunt... except about half the people had earbuds jammed in their heads.

and they totally missed out on the raw ecstasy of communitas, rambling through the city streets, doing what it is we've been doing for hundreds of thousands of years...

running.

just fucking running.

The golden rule, bitches

it amazes me that our species has gotten so far and accomplished so much towards the continuing realm of progress; yet at the same time, as a whole, we still can't exercise the most basic, most practical, most beneficial life-guiding maxim:

do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

i learned this in fucking kindergarten.

now, i will freely admit: i didn't really get it until i was about 27 years old... but once i got it, i really got it. everything sort of made sense after that. i didn't have to question my every move anymore. it was quite the mind-freeing experience.

and nowadays i treat others how i would want to be treated and it fucking works!

but on a large, worldwide scale, we are not even close to putting such good advice in practice.

why? what's the fucking problem? we put a man on the moon but can't stop murdering our fucking neighbors?

differences. intolerance. hate.

all tenets (okay, maybe not tenets, but definitely by-products) of religion... like it or not.

my advice? ditch jesus, muhammad and whatever other invisible friend ya wanna cling to and stick to the golden rule.

ya can't ever go wrong in that.

Understanding their "god experience"

a well-prepared and educated atheist cannot lose a debate with a religious person. he just can't. because no matter what, the religious person cannot provide proof for his argument, that a god exists.

until he can prove that, the status quo is that god doesn't exist.

but that never seems to stop the religious man (the christian to be exact) from coming back with his supposedly hallowed trump card that "i have experienced god in my life". whether the god experience in question is sky daddy picking him up while walking along the beach or answering his prayers with some physical sign (whatever mundane event he feels like attributing to "god" on any particular day), it is hard to argue with a christian about his "god experience".

so you don't. you can't. you can't have a logical discussion with someone who bases his argument on hallucination, delusion, make-believe wishful thinking. as an atheist, i cannot argue against said man's god experience. i can think it crazy (because it is, more or less) but i cannot deny the sincerity with which he speaks.

i may not believe in flying spaghetti monsters, but i do believe those individuals who say they have experienced them. why?

because it's all relative -- relative bullshit that susceptible folks convince themselves of being real. i know, because i've been there. i've been one of them.

of course, i was given no choice. i was forced to believe in the fairytales of the bible from as early as i can remember. church every sunday. youth groups. bible studies. i was part of the atrocity, part of the maniacal drone army of christians who was taught to never, ever, EVER question the existence of god and his holy jesus. it wasn't until i left my simple minded home at the age of 18 that i really started to digress from my christian roots; and during those early, formative years of my adolescence, i had lots and lots of those "god experiences".

it's simple really. victor turner summed it up with his communitas explanation. and i concur. the one common factor in all my "god experiences" was the influence of communitas. no question. my experiences took place at the front of the church, with hundreds of people gathered around me, praying for my soul, chantings, singing, waving hands in the air. my experiences came from christian rock concerts where 15,000 people gathered together in the name of holy jesus, speaking in tongues, sweating, praising that thing which none of us could see. my experiences came from the twisted teachings of elders who wanted the best for me, to become a strong christian leader in the community, to take over for them one day so that the lie could continue on and on and on...

as you can see, none of these "god experiences" came on its own, without suggestion from others, without the comfort of knowing a whole sea of equally misguided people had my back.

having eschewed the fettering shackles of the church long ago, i continue to have "god experiences" in my life today, only now i am awake enough to know such experiences have nothing to do with god and everything to do with what's going on in my brain. endorphins. blood pressure. serotonin.

probably my most memorable euphoric experiences (previously referred to here as "god experiences") took place in the dance clubs of Madrid, Beijing and Los Angeles -- all stops on my four year tour of ecstasy binging. when ya get a thousand people in one dark room with bass pumping and lights flashing and love brewing and serotonin levels rising it's nearly impossible for one to not feel like he/she is touching god. that's why i did it night after night after night.

and like my youthful dance with religion, such a lifestyle eventually caused me a lot of problems.

a college mentor of mine (a gun-totin' atheist lesbian no doubt) once said, with the secular wit she was universally known for, that: "if you wanna feel the hand of god, honey, drink a glass of red wine in a hot bath while listening to philip glass' metamorphosis. that, my dear, is the fucking hand of god."

she was right.

just in case you don't believe me, here's the first movement. you can supply the hot bath and red wine yourself.



:-)