Running Journal Entry #3

Running Journal

Entry #3

I have a treadmill in my basement. Ok, if you must know, it’s a Peloton treadmill. Can we move on now? It is pretty fabulous though. My father would have loved one. Although, maybe it’s a little too hi-falootin? Too many features. The music & the scenery. I think, like me, he would not listen to the music. Because like me, he would hate it. This is my journal entry so I can say things like: Pop Music is for the Birds or Billie Eilish is Shitty. I probably shouldn’t though. Because I don’t wanna get into a whole thing here. & who cares? & I do like some pop music. Nothing is absolute except perhaps the Eilish statement. But I try to avoid remarks about taste. I really do. Because it derails things. It sends us spinning into irrelevant directions. I couldn’t care less what kind of music you listen to or what your politics are or what god you pray to. It matters not. & the fires of mediocrity ever burn.

I think my father would have liked the things about the treadmill that I like. It is really easy to use. Two little dials on the right & the left control speed & incline. The readout on the screen is easy to decipher & is comprehensive. & the feature that I think is outtasite is you can run in many places. Spain. Iceland. Chile, etc. I have never been to any of those places. I have never been anywhere really. Meaning I have never been out of the United States, except for those wild adventures in Tijuana & Ensenada I took as a teenager & young man. That is another entry. Trust me. But let me just say that you have not lived until you have arrived at some type of biblical knowledge of a woman who only speaks Spanish in a hotel bathroom. I suggest exorbitant amounts of cocaine. See what I mean? I will get back to that. This is not the time or the place. I did get in a fight outside a bar in Tijuana though. We were watching the 1988 NBA Finals wherein the Lakers defeated the Pistons four games to three & it was a very exciting time for basketball. I guess every generation thinks they have the best sports & the best music & the best art, but the eighties was a time of high art & phenomenal & diverse & groundbreaking music & basketball was at its pinnacle. Again, let’s not argue. Just listen ok? I don’t remember why we were fighting. It is beyond me. There was a language barrier, though most of my friends spoke Spanish I did not. I do know this for a certainty: I had my ass handed to me. I was an incredible loud-mouth in those days & was prone to great soliloquies in which I would spout insults & jokes & observations at an alarming rate (see previous comment about cocaine) & although I thought I was quite brilliant & hilarious, others usually did not. No matter what language. & so I took a tremendous beating, not unlike the Lakers in Game Four. I would like to tell you that was the game playing on the screen in the background, but that would be poetic license. Let’s say it was.

My father would have liked the scenery feature. I’m sure of it. &, like me, he would choose Spain a menudo! Its nice to get away. It is. Let me say this though. Nothing beats running in the hills by my house in Glenford, NY. Nothing. It is stunning. The air is so clean. Trees & deer & birds abound. There are little ponds & streams & bridges & the houses…? Lord the houses!! One of these days I will tell you about how, more than anything, I want to purchase a home here in this area. I want to buy a home here & live out the rest of my days in it with my family. I want my family to love it as much as I do & we will all have our own little sections of the house to retreat to. & there is a great kitchen in which we gather & cook & eat & laugh & insult one another as The Delgados are wont to do. I want it to be a place that remains in my family & is, sheesh can I say this? Is this even how this word operates? I want it to be my Legacy. Like, yeah he was a real fuck-up & couldn’t ever get it right, but man that house though, it’s pretty neat.

That’s why I think my father would have liked the scenery feature. Because I think he, like me, was a bit of a secret dreamer & a fabulous pessimist & definitely a cranky realist.  He would run all over Fresno, Ca. He was known for it. He ran in the strangling heat. One hundred degrees plus for months on end. Through the desultory valley fog. Into the darkness after work in the winter. He loved it. He was, as they say, a fiend for it. & on days when he didn’t feel well or there was rain, especially as he got older & maybe he wanted to avoid the heat, or, sometimes wanted an additional run he would employ his treadmill. The treadmill. Running without going anywhere. Do I need to do this? I think he, like me, felt free when he was running. & unlike me, I think he was only free when he was running. He had three children & a wife. He lived in a run-down house with one bathroom in a lower middle class neighbourhood, just minutes from Motel Drive. My eventual haunt. Junkies & Gangsters & The Bereft. The Lost. Just one step away. Right down the road. From our porch you could see them traverse McKinley Ave. all day long. Back & forth to nowhere. When my father died & we cleared out that little haunted house for good we had a trash bin in the driveway. It was a behemoth. It was a canyon of despair. & when I arrived on the second morning to finish the job it was filled with those feckless denizens of Motel Drive. They crawled over the surface listless as slime. They burrowed into the waste, parasitic & nefarious. They neither flinched nor acknowledged my existence when I arrived, but carried on the way a crow does as it yanks the guts from an animal in the road until a car brushes it off & it circles & returns. Well I couldn’t stand to see them there & I erupted for the first time since my father had died. I flung down on them all manner of scorn. I drove them from the bin & out into the heat & the day that gave less a fuck about them than I did. I’d had it. & I knew I was one of them. Retired, of course, but an alumni. They will never go anywhere. Just like my father never did. I suggested to him, at the end of his life, that instead of throwing his money into the dust bin of old folks homes that we rent a house in Spain & I go with him & I care for him… of course he poo pooed it, like he poo pooed everything. My poor father as beautiful & rugged as he was, lacked poetry.

Now, I have to pause here. I started this fucking thing with a great metaphor. I have a treadmill in my basement. I was going to tell you how I have old tapes in my head that I play over & over. I was going to make the connections about said treadmill in the basement & the cyclical shit in my mind. How I run & run & never go anywhere! I was going to tell you about how I don’t know how to live free. That I substitute the scenery on the treadmill for actually doing anything. That I am, in fact hiding, like my father did, behind minor physical accomplishments because I lack the imagination & the intelligence & the wherewithal to do anything else. That I am solely the ice monster in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer who is only good for terror & placing a star on a tree because I’m a little tall. Ok? I can move a heavy box & thats about it. Fuck man. My dad died alone & bewildered in an Alzheimers ward. He petered out & never went anywhere. He never got outta that house man. I mean he did, but it was a fucking downgrade. I used to tell my dad that I would care for him at the end of his life. That he would never end up in a place like that. I promised him. I didn’t follow through. I really didn’t know what to do. & do you want to hear something fucked up? I didn’t want to. I mean I did, but I didn’t. Its complicated. I feel a great shame. I feel a great loss. I don’t know how to fix it. Like I don’t know how to fix my life. I don’t.

I have a treadmill in my basement. I ran on it this morning. I ran a 10k in Spain & a 10k in Chile. The sun was shining in both places. Here in the Catskills it is raining. I have been sick since Saturday. I don’t know if it’s a cold or what. My throat is sore. I can’t lie down without coughing. My shoulders & lower back ache. I have not taken any medicine which is not my normal behavior. I typically would load up on Dayquil. At night Theraflu & Benadryl & NyQuil &, of course, my Albuterol inhaler on repeat until I’m a shaky wreck. Instead I ran a 10k on Tuesday & I ran today. It is raining outside. Glenford Wittenberg road is enveloped in fog. Some guy just drove up in our driveway & got out with some pamphlets in his hand looking for our front door. I spoke to him through the kitchen window. He wanted to know if I support Kamala Harris our Donald Trump in the upcoming election? Let me tell you something. I wanted to throw down the same scorn on this guy that I did the junkies outside my father’s house. I wanted to lay into him. Instead I just said I’m not interested man, thank you. He got back in his car without looking at me & went to the neighbors house. I wonder if he has a treadmill in his basement? I have not taken any medicine for this cold. I have carried on with my life. This morning I ran in Spain & Chile. I ran on the treadmill because I don’t feel well & it is raining outside & I really want to keep running. I haven’t used my Albuterol inhaler for half a year at least. To be honest, I don’t know how long it has been because I haven’t kept track of it. I have been told all my life that I have asthma. I have had terrible asthma attacks. When I was a child my mom would turn on the shower as hot as it would go & put me in our tiny bathroom to breathe the steam. I was always getting pneumonia. I once was hospitalized & placed in a plastic bubble for a month or so… I was unable to breathe regular air. They pumped me full of so many drugs I would wake up on the ceiling looking down on my my sleeping mother & my hospital room. She was always there you know & now she’s gone.

I don’t know how to live free. I want to. I always did. I substituted anger & hostility & defiance for intelligence & freedom. I listened to what other people said about me. I listened to a strange voice in my head, A scared one. I listened to Mr Sorrow on the streets of Sacramento & in the dark spaces of whatever apartment I was about to be kicked out of. I became deranged & more voices arrived. To many to name. I have spent the last fifteen years sifting through the madness. I sometimes can hear something that might be true. One by one the voices have dissipated. Really. Mr Sorrow has left the premises. There is one or two left. Voices & visitors. They hover around in my kitchen & bedroom & living room between the hours of 11pm & 4am. & there are the ghosts of my parents now. I speak to them the most. I tell them I am sorry. I tell them I forgive them. I tell them I will try to do better. I will. I have some dreams. I do. I have some thoughts on what I want & who I want to be. I have a treadmill in my basement & last night I ran a 10k in Scotland. Every path dense with fog. The air opaque. My vision limited. But I keep going. I can see my feet on the treadmill because that is a real vision & it is right in front of me not in Scotland but on a spinning path in my basement in Glenford, NY.

Can I share this recent vision with you? After all, it is my journal entry. Do you wanna hear it? Ok. I am one hundred & sixty pounds. I am not wearing shoes. I have a pair of long cutoffs on. Maybe denim or…? Man, I’m not sure. I can’t see it & fashion has always eluded me. I think I will know soon. Anyway, I am not wearing shoes & I am wearing the cutoffs & that’s it. No shirt. No shoes. My hair is unbelievably short. Shorter than it has ever been. I am tan. Deeply tan. Fabulously tan. Really. You wouldn’t believe it man. I am standing by the water in Malaga, Spain. I am so thin & so old & lately I speak more Spanish than English. We have just left our home in The Catskills to stay here in Malaga. It is our other place. We just bought it not too long ago. Melanie is decorating it. I can hear voices out of the frame of the dream. It is so sunny & warm & I am fabulously tan & older than I have ever been. I am smiling.