goneontherun

[goneontherun]

life feels like magic today. ran a fucking solid 6km to the gym this morning, had one of the best condi programmes in a while, and wrote a thing!

thinking about my favorite totoro scene!! absolute magic in the rsc production at the barbican too :")

#Spotify #Youtube

[goneontherun]

9 mar

#Youtube

[goneontherun]

1 mar

i wrote this when i was a high school senior - a whole decade ago now. when i obsessed over (leaving for) college, tried for a long time to prove something to myself and everyone else, and carried and acted on so much self-hatred.

there were many times i felt like i could never be lucky enough to get what i wanted.

this week started with the excited-scared-anxious feelings, but at the end of the week it feels like i've been around some time already, love the autonomy and that i can make and own my decisions and mistakes. slowly but surely letting it all go, and leaving a note here to remember this normal, somewhat tired, but happier me.

[goneontherun]

❤️

“[What Rushdie took away from reading Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum]: Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be ruthless. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things--childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves--that go on slipping like sand, through our fingers.”

[goneontherun]

Eulogy

Wet eternal summer days. The air charred by smog And singed with incense. I hurry past a temple every Morning where it always seems to be raining fat, insistent droplets on an otherwise clear day.

Just inside an old man shakes three joss sticks at the fancy hotel across the street Muttering blessings or maybe curses I never stay long enough to hear.

I meant to go further than here, not come back To these old rites — worn, ill-fitting, and no Longer fit for the season; a passage That has long come of age.

But here I lived with a new anger, grunting Through the years without obedience. Was I happy? Did I resist molding To shape — or did I bend the other way?

[goneontherun]

season finale

went through all my old photos for a picture of durham from first year. the one where i ran on country roads for the first time, cooked nearly every meal, endured 20-30 minute walks in the cold back to college, lived in and loved my first ensuite room, and made a few new friends. i know there was the other year before this one, but it passed in a frenzy and i never felt like myself most of the time. so when i look back now, 2016 was quiet, soulful, and, truthfully, all mine. and it always feels like the start of everything.

those were the years of putting in the work of unlearning everything i grew up with. with it my priorities and dreams changed. i found i loved living in a place this quiet and cold, and so close to nature. i grew even more critical of the values that i felt i had to inhabit, lost my competitive streak, focused on having experiences, and found myself wanting more than the taste of opportunity i'd been given. over the years i picked up new interests, opened myself up, developed my politics, and came home completely changed.

i finally feel like i'm leaving it all behind - most of all the boredom and the rage. but knowing who i am, or who i've become, maybe this has always been the inevitable outcome.

[goneontherun]

[goneontherun]

8/9 dec

who tf is cutting onions in my room????

i remember hearing emilia jones' rendition of this in CODA, and weeping through the scene where she's performing the song at an audition with her family in the audience. i've been crying a lot more easily lately -- over films, books, music, finishing a good workout. i feel so open, and so light, in a way that i haven't felt in a long time.

i'm learning to be brave, to be believe that i can want my own happiness, even if it's selfish, and to accept the humbling magnanimity of those for whom my happiness means something. that's one thing i'll remember when this day is long gone, and everything that feels surreal now becomes real and mine.

*

So many things I would have done / But clouds got in my way

I've looked at love from both sides now From give and take, and still somehow It's love's illusions I recall I really don't know love at all

i think i fear regret and stasis more than i fear hurtling without guardrails.

i've been listening to these two songs on repeat since yesterday. this is the one that captures how i feel in this moment of time -- teetering but resolute, scared but brave, and keeping a steady gaze forward but, like orpheus, sneaking one last look at the past.

*

We're captive on the carousel of time We can't return, we can only look Behind, from where we came And go round and round and round, in the circle game

[goneontherun]

[goneontherun]

Hélène Cixous, The Newly Born Woman

[goneontherun]

wrote this in early 2020 i think, when i was still living in israel. before we had an embassy there, before the abraham accords, before bibi had a second term, before the judicial reform protests, and before covid. when the scrim of normality was already there - as it had always been.

i remember travelling to the west bank, and seeing the settlements and learning about borders and checkpoints. we learnt about the intifadas, and about the 1948 nakba. and often talked amongst ourselves about where this conflict might go, and articulating, necessarily, the sides we took.

thinking with a lot of sadness a lot these days about what's going on there, how difficult it is, and what safety for people on both sides can look like.

[goneontherun]

17 sep

the world feels bigger now, again, and my ennui, anger and dissatisfaction have parted into a sort of restlessness. more than ever i feel so ready to go. more than ever, i feel like i've been working so hard at living the life i want to have. and, as jason (from trying) said, closing the gap between where i am and where i want to be. i look back on the past year and a half at least, and i'm kinda proud of me.

the other day i ran the length of the coast from bondi to coogee, and loved every minute of running with the salty smell of the ocean. i can't stop thinking about this run and climbing those crazy cliffs and navigating the narrow steps. in the last two months alone i've ran and swam in the lakes in switzerland, climbed mountains, baked in the sun, spent several weeks grumbling about the job i do not love, and spent 4 days on a trek in what felt like the southernmost reaches of the world. there's something about all this movement that makes me feel most like myself.

when i was walking the other day i thought of the day in 2015 when i first rode the T up to davis on my own, and how free i felt. i missed that all of a sudden, and thinking about it made me cry in the dark of the dorm when everyone was already sleeping. when i finally put on my headlamp and waddled down the boardwalk to the sinks to pee and wash my eyes, i suddenly had this destructive urge to take a sledgehammer to everything in my life. sometimes the urge is there. i'm so restless. i want so badly sometimes to just up and run.

[goneontherun]

#Youtube

[goneontherun]

7 sep

it's 7 in the morning in hobart and i'm writing this sitting in the dark of a hotel room. we've just spent 4 days walking through tall ferns, heathland, and deep forests, climbing rocks for the best views of the crazy high dolerite cliffs of tasman island, and cresting the sea cliffs along the tasman peninsula.

there's a calm, steadiness i feel when walking. i first remember that clarity from the sundays at 16 i spent walking up and down bukit timah hill and exploring the rail corridor before it had a name. more and more, i've been feeling sure and steady, and more ready than ever. who knew there'll come a time when you just know?

[goneontherun]

— Albert Camus to René Char, Correspondance (1946-1959).

[goneontherun]

8 Apr

Peers

By Craig Morgan Teicher

I’m thinking of you beautiful and young, of me young

and confused and maybe beautiful. There were lots of us—

these were our twenties, when, post-9/11, we were about to

inherit the world, and we had no idea what to do with it. And look

what we did, and we didn’t. And now look at us, and it.

We turned away for a blip, started whispering, kissing, had kids,

bought houses, changed bulbs, submitted claims, changed channels,

FaceTimed, streamed, upgraded, were two-day-shipped to, and midway

through our prime earning years we look up again, decades groggy,

decades late. Forgive us, we thought— but now it doesn’t matter. These are our

outcomes, consequences, faults, forties, when the hourglass

is beeping and bleak and people like us have memories like this

and wonder if the beauty that’s left is really still beautiful, if it was.

[goneontherun]

emily, forgive me, can we / make it up as we go along? / i'm twenty-seven and i don't know who i am / but i know what i want