Marathon Heroes: "These are the things that define you ..."

I was watching this press interview with Kara Goucher after the NYC Marathon, and it was heartbreaking for me. [ Source ]

Kara Goucher finished 14th at the NYC Marathon with a time of 2:37:03. It was her big return since the 2013 Boston Marathon, and fans like myself were all looking forward to her doing well. Things did not go as planned though. For the first time in her running career, she "hit a wall" - that painful, unspeakable moment when the brain and body shut down and you truly struggle to carry on. She admitted in this video this is the first time she "hit a wall" running. I watched her break down, emotions overwhelming her. I imagine the kind of doubts and anguish going through her head when so many people had their hopes on her making a triumphant return after injuries and changing coaches.

“I’m really sensitive so it hurts,” Goucher said, wiping away more tears. “I know I am in great shape and can do great things. It’s like, ‘Well that sucked.’ I’ve worked really hard and have a lot of people behind me and I’m like, ‘That’s what it was?’ But that’s what it was. It just wasn’t great. It was really sucky, actually.

“This is the most pain I have ever been in my entire life” she continued. “Both physically and emotionally. It’s taken so much for me to get back here and so many people have invested in me so I feel a responsibility for that and then physically I have never felt like that before where I literally couldn’t move. It was not a good experience."

It was a most human moment. She was an Olympian, an elite runner, but even heroes struggle. I think we often forget that. After finishing the race, Kara Goucher broke down and wept. Meb Keflezighi, approached her and comforted her. Meb finished 23rd last year, but came back strong this year to finish 4th in the NYC men's race, and he won the Boston Marathon earlier this year. This is a guy who fell and tasted the ashes, but found it inside him to pick him up. Kara said:

“I talked to Meb about it and he said, ‘These are the things that define you and the experiences that make you appreciate the good times and make you work even harder,’” Goucher said. “He came up to me and I started crying and he started crying. Then he said, ‘Look at where I was last year and look at where I am now. I believe and don’t let this sway you from what you know you’re capable of.’

Heroes struggle too. We forget that. What makes them heroes is precisely because they struggle, and continue to get back up and fight harder. What makes them heroes is because they understand the struggle, and they work to lift others up.

 Stay strong, Kara. We believe in you. Stay strong, Meb. Both of you are heroes.

[ Source: @Adam_Goucher ]

Murakami on sniffing books

“When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Curator - care of the souls or aqueducts?

Brief history of the word, "curator":

A very short history of the word 'curator' might run as follows. In Ancient Rome, curatores were senior civil servants in charge of various departments of public works, overseeing the Empire's aqueducts, bathhouses and sewers. Fast forward to the medieval period, and we encounter the curatus, a priest devoted to the care (or 'cura') of souls.

By the end of the 20th century, 'curator' came to describe a broad category of exhibition makers, from museum employees who spend years working on modest, scrupulously researched displays of Sumerian pottery, to freelancers who approach large scale Biennales of contemporary art as an opportunity to clear their auteurial throat.

Here in the third millennium, the word curator has undergone a further shift in usage. Appropriated by the marketing departments of businesses keen to imbue their products with an air of hard-won distinction and borrowed avant-garde cool, it is now used to describe anybody from the celebrity programmer of a pop festival to a fashion stylist who puts together a 'capsule collection' from a department store's fall/winter stock. A curator, here, is essentially a paid selector of stuff for sale, whether it be concert tickets or cuff links.

NaNoWriMo 2014

Signed up for NaNoWriMo. No one ever said it has to be deathless prose, right?

Hiatus No More! Sleater-Kinney's Coming Back!

They are coming back! Sleater-Kinney's coming back! Here's their new single, "Bury Our Friends". Their new album is scheduled to drop January next year! I'm stoked!

Nico and Patti Smith

I did not know that Patti Smith and Nico knew each other. Patti Smith did not speak much of her acquaintance with the tall blonde, hipster femme fatale.

Came across this excerpt from a book on Nico recently though, where she spoke about her impression of Patti Smith, and Smith's generosity to her. It's a small human piece, but so touching.

“I had met Patti in New York, when she was a young poet on the scene. She was a female Leonard Cohen, when she moved from writing to singing, and I liked her because she was thin but strong. John Cale produced her first album, which was about heroin (Horses, 1975). Then I met her in Paris, and got to know her better. I felt like she could be a sister, because anyway she was the double of Philippe Garrel, and I liked to be together with her...

“Patti was very kind to me. Early in 1978 my harmonium was stolen from me. I was without any money and now I couldn’t even earn a living playing without my organ. A friend of mine saw one with green bellows in an obscure shop, the only one in Paris. Patti bought it for me. I was so happy and ashamed. I said, “I’ll give you back the money when I get it”, but she insisted the organ was a present and I should forget about the money. I cried. I was ashamed she saw me without money.”

- Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon, Richard Witts

CAMUS | To Read

The absurdity of my life is not lost on me. I have began to wonder about my own sanity. Perhaps this is why I decided to start a reading list for myself yesterday. I have decided I will read the works of Albert Camus - works by him, works about him. I may not read everything, but as much as possible.

So here we go - for 1st October 2014, I read The Outsider, by Albert Camus. Translator: Sandra Smith.

Geoff Dyer, on Albert Camus

Geoff Dyer, on Albert Camus:

I was drawn to Albert Camus because he looked so cool in his trenchcoat, because the Cure wrote a song inspired by one of his books (The Outsider), because he and his pug-ugly friend Sartre were existentialists (which seemed related, somehow, to the trenchcoat).

Probably one of the most honest reason for reading Camus.

Thug Kitchen Cookbook Trailer (explicit)

This is probably one of the better book trailers I have seen in a while. I'm definitely going to get the Thug Kitchen Cookbook

Gaiman on Pratchett: "Terry Pratchett isn't jolly. He's Angry"

I promised myself to write more often, but truth is, these days I am just trying to find more time for sleep. So here's a piece from Neil Gaiman, on Terry Pratchett and the inner rage that drove his writings. They have been friends for a while now, even wrote a book together, which was hilarious. The worldknows about Pratchett's decline because of early on-set Alzheimer's. As a fan of his books, this saddens me, because it's a disease that will gradually strips one of their dignity before the end.

This essay by Gaiman shares something about Pratchett that I have always believed in - that there's something serious and earnest behind his books.

Terry looked at me. He said: “Do not underestimate this anger. This anger was the engine that powered Good Omens.” I thought of the driven way that Terry wrote, and of the way that he drove the rest of us with him, and I knew that he was right.

There is a fury to Terry Pratchett’s writing: it’s the fury that was the engine that powered Discworld

This rage that Gaiman describes, seems to me a symptom of a sense of injustice; things should be better, ought to be better. People should know better, ought to do better - but we often fail. I see it in the moments of sad acceptance in Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching - characters who have enough wisdom and courage to see the truth about human nature, yet somehow found something precious within themselves to continue to care. I always believe that people gets truly angry because they care.

This is why I love Pratchett's writings: the moral outrage in his writings that's cleverly disguised as "low-brow" humour. The humanity and heart in them.

I also have a parent at home with early on-set Alzheimer's. I can't bring myself to wish that he gets better, because I know that's an empty hope at the moment. It will only get worse. We are losing one of our greatest mind. That is a tragedy.

My Own Magical Reading

It's a warm Sunday afternoon right now. I'm out at a local cafe with a book and a cup of teh cino (frothy milk tea). I picked up this title yesterday from the bookstore - Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading. It's a reading memoir, where Nina Sankovitch decided one day to stop running from the grief in her life, since her sister's death - and just read. Just stay still and read and let the books soothe her.

It felt like a good plan, something that I am dying for myself. The title itself reminded me of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking - and perhaps it was meant to allure to that, both books coping with loss and grief in their own way. 

We all come to books for our own reasons. Right now, I need my old friends for some comfort. Today I opened up a new Moleskine cahier (I have lots of them around the house). I wrote down the titles of the books that I still have in progress, wrote down the date I started on them, similar to this blog, and started my Reading Journal again. I can only write again when I start reading again. This much I know. For me to read again, my mind has to be at peace.

So, for now, some milk tea and a book. 

This is my own magical reading place.

Patti Smith - People Have the Power!

Patti Smith at Riot Fest, performing "People Have the Power". Around 6:30, she remind us, "We do have the power! Our governments, our corporations would like us to feel defeated, but we have it with our numbers if we use it. Don't forget it!" 

MURAKAMI | Feeling the Voice and the Music in Murakami

I'm reading Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. It has the Murakami signature "voice". I think about it, and his books are often a little depressing, quiet and understated - but I love the "voice". I once told a friend about how it feels reading a Murakami novel - it's like I'm sitting at a table, in a jazz bar. There's only him, and me, at the table. There's cigarette smoke in the air, and a couple of beer between us. Then he starts telling me a story, quietly, and I'm just there, listening. Just him and me.

I'm back on the groove and ease reading his most recent book. I like how he always ties in his other passions into his books, most of all music - which might be how he achieves the "voice" in his novels. If it doesn't "sound" right, it's not right. It's about the melody, the "feel" of the voice, rather than the plot that matters. In a way, he's writing a melody as a book.

I had this conversation with a friend a while back. She pays attention to the lyrics of the songs, while I tend to pay more attend to the melody and I often forget the lyrics. It's an odd thing, considering how I am a reader - yet I do not read the lyrics much. I tap into the rhythm, the melody, the sound and the mood of music. Just like how I tap into the "voice" in Murakami's novels and not the story as much, considering how I am a story person.

It is fascinating to think about how Murakami taps into music and channels them creatively into his writing. Perhaps he channels his writing into his running as well. I'm not the only one curious about it, as this Murakami Literary Playlist show.

For now, the playlist for Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is Liszt:

As they listened to one piano recording, Tsukuru realized that he'd heard the composition many times in the past. He didn't know the title, however, or the composer. It was a quiet, sorrowful piece that began with a slow, memorable theme that played out as single notes, then proceeded into a series of tranquil variations. Tsukuru looked up from the book he was reading and asked Haida what it was.
'"Franz Liszt's 'La mal du pays.' It's from his Years of Pilgrimage Suite 'Year One: Switzerland.'"
"'La mal du…'?"
"'La map du pays.' It's French. Usually it's translated as 'homesickness,' or 'melancholy.' If you put a finer point on it, it's more like 'a groundless sadness called forth in a person's heart by a pastoral landscape.' It's a hard expression to translate accurately." 

A song on pilgrimage. I get that.

My copy of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.
Might add more stickers to the cover as I progress with the story.

Simon Sinek: Why Leaders Eat Last

I was watching this TED talk by Simon Sinek on why leaders eat last. I like this definition of leadership - that you are given more, so that when it matters, you put yourself at risk for others. It made me reflect on myself, in my role at work, and also about the managers I have encountered through the years, and about those in positions of political power in my country.

The How many of those at the top fulfils the anthropological definition of leadership?

“The cost of leadership is self-interest. If you’re not willing to give up your perks when it matters, then you probably shouldn’t get promoted. You might be an authority, but you will not be a leader. Leadership comes at a cost. You don’t get to do less work when you get more senior, you have to do more work. And the more work you have to do is put yourself at risk to look after others. That is the anthropological definition of what a leader is. This the why we are so offended by these banker boys who pay themselves astronomical salaries. It has nothing to do with the number. It has to do with the fact that they have violated a deep-seated social contract.”

20 Odd Questions with Patti Smith

From Wall Street Journal

Patti Smith:

When I go on tour, I only pack a very small suitcase. The thing that takes me the longest to choose is the book I'm going to read. It is Dylan Thomas's 100th anniversary this year; I have Elizabeth Bishop's copy of "In Country Sleep," so I might bring that.

Alone, Lonely and Sadly

A colleague told me the story about her father-in-law and his family a while back. He was dying, and they took him home, so that the family could look after him. The sad truth is, the old man had left a legacy of irresponsible parenting. As my colleague told me - "He only knew how to make babies and go fishing. He doesn't know how to look after his kids." 

The old man had eight children - yet at the end of his days, it was his daughter-in-laws who bathed, him, fed him, took care of him. His own children were not available. This is the truth of a family with no bond. My colleague told me how her mother-in-law was angry as the man was dying - after all the years, she was still angry at the husband who wasn't around, and whom she thought ruined her life. 

When the man finally passed away, he was alone. His wife eventually went to check on him, and found that he was not breathing. So a man with a wife and eight children died alone, lonely and sadly.

ESSAY | Why I Teach Plato to Plumbers

Good article on the importance of liberal arts in our education. [ Full article ]

My answer is that we should strive to be a society of free people, not simply one of well-compensated managers and employees. Henry David Thoreau is as relevant as ever when he writes, “We seem to have forgotten that the expression ‘a liberal education’ originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while the learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood merely, was considered worthy of slaves only.”

My Saturday Evening

It's been a while since I had time alone with a book. I am out at a Starbucks, people watching, drinking a hot cafe latte and reading. It's ironical that I am only able to find quiet solitude outside in public, surrounded by strangers and not at home with family. That's life, I guess.

I've just started on Katie Roiphe's In Praise of Messy Lives, and it's a hoot. "L'hypocrisie de la bourgeoisie" seems to be the overarching theme of her collection of essays. I'm on the first two essays, where she talked about the fact that she had to raise two children (from different fathers) as a single mother, and the reactions from those around her. She described the parallels between The Age of Innocence and when she was going through her divorce, and later The Scarlet Letter against when she was raising a child without the child's father. Her situation brought out some annoying (to me) reactions that reminds me how it's often not about you, but rather, it's about them - and people are most intolerant of the situations that they are unable to bear in their own lives. It helps that she is interestingly unrepentant about it all.

I did find her observation of the perception of single mothers interesting:

Part of what seems threatening or unsettling about the single mother's household is precisely that sense that the mother may be glimpsed as more of a person, that these children are witnessing a struggle they should not be seeing, that their mother is very early on a regular, complicated person, rather than simply an adult who is part of the opaque, semi-separate adult culture of the house.

I'm reminded of Desperate Housewives, especially the character Bree (the red head) with her perfectly constructed family life that underpinned a psychotic intensity that absolutely made it absolutely believable that she was capable of murder. What is it with the need for perfection?

Life is more interesting when we stop trying to be perfect and allow the messiness.

So here's to a messy life.

MURAKAMI | Run To Live Life to the Fullest

“People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they'll go to any length to live longer. But don't think that's the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life — and for me, for writing as whole. I believe many runners would agree”

― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

(Photo: Haruki Murakami, after finishing his first marathon from Athens to Marathon in the blistering summer heat - July 18th, 1983. [Source])

Donna Tartt wins Pulitzer Prize

So Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer this year for The Goldfinch - which I brought to Amsterdam as travel reading (Bad idea to bring thick books on a trip. When will I ever learn?) Some parts of it interested me - but the narrative fell flat midway. I will probably finish it eventually. I still can't quite decide if this book is overrated. I had better hopes for it, but it's not engaging me the way I had hoped.

That said, I am very taken with this picture of Donna Tartt, taken by Anne Leibovitz for Vanity Fair.

MUSIC | Nirvana, featuring Lorde covering "All Apologies"

Nirvana gets inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and they decided a all-female line-up is the way to go. So here's a fan's wet dream of Nirvana hits, with Lorde, Kim Gordon, Joan Jett and St Vincent all on stage. Lorde does the vocals on "All Apologies". I'm old enough to remember when Kurt Cobain sang it.

I heart this.

ELIZABETH GILBERT | "Take me with you in spirit ... Tell us what you find. I will follow you later"

I saw this Facebook entry by Elizabeth Gilbert today. Travels is on the top of my mind lately, since I came back from Amsterdam and Paris just a few weeks ago. The question of why we travel is, and how it changes us. I thought she but it rather well. But most of all, this lines, that a neighbour said to her before she embarked on the journey that would lead to Eat, Pray, Love:

"Take me with you in spirit. Take all of us with you, who dream of someday doing this but who right now staying home and taking care of the contracts we have signed with our lives. Tell us what you find. I will follow you later."

Travel well, and when you return, share.

WHY WE MUST SOMETIMES GO...

Right now I'm reading for the first time the great memoir TRACKS by Robyn Davidson — a classic of both women's and Australian literature. For those of you who aren't familiar with this book, it's wonderful — the chronicle of a woman who, back in the 1970s, rode 1,700 miles all alone across the Australian Outback with three camels.

Why did she do it? What I love about this story is that she does not ever really provide a why. She did it because she needed to do it.

A lot of people told her she was crazy to set out on such a dangerous journey, and that she would probably die during it. But, Davidson recounts, she had one conversation before she left with an older female friend who told her: "I really like what you're doing...Getting off your butt and actually doing something is important for all of us...It's important that we leave each other and the comfort of it, and circle away, even though it's hard sometimes, so that we can come back and swap information about what we've learned, even if what we do changes us, and we risk not recognizing each other when we return."

THAT IS WHY WE MUST SOMETIMES GO AWAY.

Not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of each other. To model another way of being. To represent, out there in the wild world. To bring back the treasure of sharing what we have learned. I remember the week before I went traveling for EAT PRAY LOVE, a neighbor (a mother of two young children) gave me a long hug and said into my ear, "Take me with you in spirit. Take all of us with you, who dream of someday doing this but who right now staying home and taking care of the contracts we have signed with our lives. Tell us what you find. I will follow you later."

And she did — about ten years later. At which point, I gave her that same hug and said the same words into her ear. As I have said those exact same words to countless other people, as they are about to embark on their own journey. Go away now, but take us with you in spirit; tell us what you learned when you return.

If it's time for you to go, go NOW. But take notes. Think of your journey toward self-discovery and adventure as a community service.

You'll make us all better for it,

HEART,

LG

MATTHIESSEN | Life Will Never Be Simple

"I dream of simplicity, but I'm as far from it as ever. That is my practice, how to be in the world and remain simple. One day perhaps I'll accept the fact that I am never going to find the simple life. Maybe the first step toward simplicity will be to accept that my life will never be simple even if I go live in a cave and subsist on green nettles like Milarepa."
— Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen RIP

Peter Matthiessen passed away. Time to re-read The Snow Leopard. [Source]

"How do we live a creative life without cutting your ears off?"

How do we "live a creative life without cutting your ears off?" That's the question Elizabeth Gilbert talks about on the Radiolab: Me, Myself and Muse.

Talk to your muse. Make it follow you.

Elizabeth Gilbert & Janneke Siebelink at the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam

It's not a secret that I enjoy Elizabeth Gilbert's writings. I believe she has a curious passion about the subjects she writes about, which comes through in her writing. Her books always led me to want to learn more, to see more. For me, that is what good writing is about - it makes you open to new experiences, more open in your hearts and minds.

I read "The Signature of All Things" last year. I saw just one copy of the book in a bookstore in New York and I grabbed it. I didn't want a bag for the book, and the guy at the bookstore just remarked, "You're going to get into it straightaway?" He was right.

I was also paying attention to the publicity on the book at that time, and I knew it wasn't supposed to be available yet (which made me wonder how the bookstore acquired their ONE copy.) The book probably taught me more about botany than I ever needed to learn, but most of all, the "Dutch-ness" of many of the characters made me curious about Amsterdam, and I wanted to see the Hortus Botanicus, where the protagonist of the book eventually ended up.

So here I am, planning for a trip to Amsterdam in a few weeks time. Anyway, here's the video of Elizabeth Gilbert at the Hortus Botanicus. Thank you, Alma, and Elizabeth Gilbert. I will definitely make a trip down there when I am in Amsterdam.

BOOKS | The Hunger Games

I just finished the final book in The Hunger Games series. One of my friends commented a few days that she was surprised it took so long for me to hit these books, since these are the type of books one would expect me to read. Fair enough - just that I had been on something of a reading dry spell, and I haven't actually been reading much fiction the last few years. I had been reading for work, for knowledge - but I haven't actually been reading for fun. Perhaps the fact that I was so taken with the Hunger Games books is a good sign that I am at this place in my life when I finally am able to read for fun.

The books were definitely richer and darker than the movie - which always reminds me of how the cinema can be such a vulgar entertainment. The Hunger Games is a narrative on the idea of Panem et Circenses (Latin for "Bread and Circus") where politicians rule by material appeasement and entertainment. Cinema itself might qualify as our modern mode of Circenses. Then people are rich enough, and entertained enough, they forget things like civic duties, and ignore injustice within the political and social system, it seems.

Which feels so close to modern life - and I am as guilty of this as anyone.

I love the social consciousness in The Hunger Games books, and while I disliked the tedious journey the third book took to get to the conclusion - it was a fitting ending.

I just hate the love triangle in the book between Katniss, Gale and Peeta. Quit it - the story of Katniss is more interesting than the love triangle. Not every story with a female lead needs romance.

Stephen King and Carrie

I'm not really a big fan of Stephen King. I think some of his books are longer than necessary and he needs better editors. I do like some of his short stories though, and I believe the truth of why his writing is so compelling is because of his understanding of human psychology.

I was reading this essay on Mental Floss earlier about the story behind King's first bestseller, Carrie. Stephen King started his writing career sending his stories to men's magazines for tiny paychecks (if he's lucky). Someone accused him of not being able to write a female character convincingly. He decided to pick up the challenge, and the idea for Carrie emerged from his brain.

King modeled Carrie White after two of the loneliest girls he remembered from high school. One was a timid epileptic with a voice that always gurgled with phlegm. Her fundamentalist mother kept a life-size crucifix in the living room, and it was clear to King that the thought of it followed her down the halls. The second girl was a loner. She wore the same outfit every day, which drew cruel taunts. By the time King wrote Carrie, both of those girls were dead. The first died alone after a seizure. The second suffered from postpartum depression and, one day, aimed a rifle at her stomach and pulled the trigger. “Very rarely in my career have I explored more distasteful territory,” King wrote, reflecting on how both of them were treated.

It made me think about Stephen King's writings - the ones I have actually read: The Shawshank Redemption, Different Seasons and The Green Mile - his "non-horror" works. King as a writer, is an astute observer of human nature. But more than that, there is deep compassion in his stories.

Date a Girl Who Runs

"Date a girl who runs because she knows how to quietly, patiently work every week on a goal she set that’s half a year or a year away. She’ll be working on her time, her distance, but what she’s really working on, is herself."

~ From Elephant Journal: Date a Girl Who Runs

I am still not sure if I am a runner yet. Lately I seem to have hit a stump on running. The insomnia and old injuries did nor help. I'm not sure why it feels so difficult to wake up in the morning to get things done. Just feels tired. Real runners are not supposed to feel this way, right? Real runners just go out and get it done no matter what, right?

Pain

"Compared to them I'm pretty used to losing. There are plenty of things in this world that are way beyond me, plenty of opponents I can never beat. Not to brag, but these girls probably don't know as much as I do about pain. And, quite naturally, there might not be a need for them to know it."

- Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Starting 2014

It's now the fifth day of 2014 and I confess - things have not been going well.

Well, let's start with the insomnia that has been plaguing me. Okay, I am a chronic insomniac, so that's not a surprise. It is however, making some of my life-changing intentions a little difficult to implement. I want to run more in the morning, I want to write more, meditate regularly, and do more yoga. All of which is difficult when I get less than 2 hours of sleep every day. Yes, you read that right. Two bloody hours.

But one thing I can do right now is to blog.

I spent some time deciding the books to start 2014 with. I decided on The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore - a title on a little discussed episode in my country's history. Maybe I am getting older. I yearn for the country I grew up in, except I look all around me these days, and I find myself in an alien, unfamiliar place. I feel like a child who grew up, and realized one day that her parents are not who she thought they were. I am questioning the things that were taught to me in school.

I also picked Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I have been doing a bit of running the past year. I finished a few 5Ks, 10Ks, and 2 Half-Marathons. But come 2014, I feel like I lost my mojo. Reading about Murakami's running and his life seems like a good way to think about my own journey.

Since we are on Haruki Murakami, is anyone else looking forward to the English translation of his new book in 2014? Finally, we will see Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.

What other titles am I looking forward to in 2014?

Well, I heard Sarah Waters has a new book out. The Paying Guests, which seems to be a follow-up to The Little Stranger. I have to find my copy of The Little Stranger among my bookshelves. I seem to have lost that title when we moved to our current place a few years ago.

Geoff Dyer, it seems, also has a new book out - Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H.W. Bush. I totally expect the book to be meandering and off-tangent, and absolutely fun. Somehow he got himself on an American supercarrier for this book.

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek will also be coming out. I came across Sinek's TED Talk a while back, where he talked about how leaders attract the people that share their passions. What does it take for a leader to transform distrust and cynicism to safety and trust? I guess I want to know what he has learned, and how I can apply that in my own life.

For a little light-hearted reading, I may pick up Karen Armstrong's Fields of Blood: A History of Religion and Violence.

Right. Lots of light reading for 2014.

Welcome 2014

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. 

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something. 

 So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.” 

 ~ Neil Gaiman

Books Read 2013

1. Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison • Piper Kerman
2. The Signature of All Things • Elizabeth Gilbert
3. Teach Us To Sit Still: A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing • Tim Parks
4. The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling • Stephen Cope
5. The Faraway Nearby • Rebecca Solnit
6. The God of the Hive • Laurie R. King
7. The Language of Bees: A Mary Russell Novel • Laurie R. King
8. Running with the Mind of Meditation: Lessons for Training Body and Mind • Sakyong Mipham
9. Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life • Brendan Brazier
10. True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart • Tara Brach, PhD
11. Running the Edge: Discover the Secrets to Better Running and a Better Life • Adam Goucher & Tim Catalano
12. Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row • Jarvis Jay Masters
13. Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers • Karyl McBride, PhD

Haruki Murakami's 2005 Marathon Time

Haruki Murakami's 2005 New York Marathon Time: 4:10:17

I'm slightly obsessed with celebrities marathon time lately.

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

It's getting closer to Christmas. (Yes, I know it's only November - but the decorations are up at the stores. )

Christmas always put me in a strange mood. I get moody, more reflective, and sad. I get nostalgic, and I miss people. Right now I need to remind myself of this - and hope to live a life without these regrets. So I'm posting this here again, as a reminder to myself.

No regrets. 

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again."

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

"This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

"Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."

What's your greatest regret so far, and what will you set out to achieve or change before you die?

Surrender is Not An Option

Great Eastern Women's Run 21.1 km Finisher medal

I earned this Finisher Medal for this year's Great Eastern Women's Run Half Marathon. 21.1 km, or 13.1 miles.

I started my journey as a runner last November. I went out one morning, ran for a while, and was defeated after less than 15 mins. I ended up walking home breathless, with the full awareness of how out of shape I was.

One year later, I find myself finishing my first half marathon. It was a humbling journey. Running is painful, and there were a few injuries along the way. I learnt so much, and yet there's still so much more to learn.

I am still limping a little from my shin splint and IT band sprain (suspected). When I showed up for my half marathon last Sunday, I just told myself to try my best - and finish. I asked myself, what can I do, if surrender is not an option?

I did think about not showing up. Sleep in and rest, I told myself. Rest.

I showed up anyway. I am glad I did.

I am not fast, but I managed to run and walk my way through a half marathon.

What am I capable of, if surrender is not an option?

A lot.

S. Rajaratnam, on Preserving History

I saw this on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sosbukitbrown

"A sense of history is what provides the links to hold together a people who came from the four corners of the earth. Because our history is short and because what is worth preserving from the past are not all that plentiful, we should try to save what is worthwhile from the past from the vandalism of the speculator and the developer, from a government and a bureaucracy which believes that anything that cannot be translated into cold cash is not worth investing in.”

- S. Rajaratnam, “The Uses and the Abuses of the Past”, Seminar on Adaptive Re-use: Integrating Traditional Areas into the Modern | Urban Fabric, (Singapore, April 1984)

S. Rajaratnam was the man who wrote our National Pledge. I wonder what he would say, to how blatantly we are destroying Bukit Brown.

POEM | Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert

Time and again, I am reminded of this poem, and what it has to say about our notion of failures. In particular, the heart-aching closing lines: "I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,/but just coming to the end of his triumph." Nothing lasts forever. Just because something ended, does not mean it was a failure or a mistake. Dare to try, and dare to risk falling. Or else, you risk failing by default, for never trying.

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

19 Lessons Running Teaches You About Life

One day I might be experienced enough to do my own list of lessons from running list. Until then, here's a list of 10 lessons from someone else who runs (I hope): 10 Lessons Running Teaches You About Life.

My favourites:

2. Consistency creates habit.
8. If you wait for the right conditions, you’ll never get anything done.

Really - just do it. Quit waiting for yourself to get fitter, or to lose weight before you do it.

Just Do It.

Yeah, I'm a big Nike fan.

Time to Look Ahead

I started the beginning of this year with the intention to write more on this blog. Well, it started off well, then I stopped for a while. This has been a pattern with me lately - getting sidetracked from where I had intended to go, intended to do.

The last few months have been busy. I have been running more this year, but not as much as I had wanted. My health took a toll this year. Been to the doctor's a few times, but nothing major.

Highlight of this year should be the trip to Seattle and later to New York. In Seattle I met up with some friends I met online, and have been chatting with for the last couple of years. It was fun, and I am glad for this chance. The internet is a great social space where we get to meet other people who we might never have come into contact within our usual social circles. Some of them are creepy, yes - and you should always take precautions when meeting the people you connect with online. But I was glad this one panned out.

After Seattle I made a trip to New York - alone. I was supposed to go with a friend last year, but it soon became obvious that my friend and I had different ideas about budget and what constitute as "essentials".

I am traveling again, and it feels like a sudden cool breeze in a hot summer. It reminds me how much I wandered away from myself the last few years. I didn't need anyone else to make me happy. Whatever I needed to be happy, I had to do for myself. I thought I was so full of wisdom and insight from the books I have read, from my practice. The last year or so have been uncomfortable - I am as capable of deception and self-deception as anyone else.

I am not sure how things will go from here. But it's time to start looking ahead. Someone asked me what's on my bucket list. I haven't really thought about the things I wanted to do. Maybe it's time to update the list again. The places I wanted to see, the things I want to do. In some places, they have started putting up the Christmas decorations. 2013 is ending soon.

Locating this Quote

Someone told me this was by Jeanette Winterson. Anyone knows the source of this quote?

Yes, we are [friends] and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often. I don't want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and doesn't bother to check their diary when we arrange to meet.

Amanda Palmer, on The Quietus

Also, Palmer on the letters of Korean Zen master, Seung Sahn:

When people come to me in times of real trouble, and sometimes they do, there's a couple of books I recommend as a way to feel grounded. One of them is a book by a Korean Zen Buddhist named Seung Sahn. It's a series of letters between him and his students. I read that book. Anthony gave me that book when I was about 23, and I took it on a trip to Australia, where I was going to street performances and try to make some money on the Adelaide street fringe. It's a long story, way too long for your article. But when I was in Australia I got accidentally arrested. I had just been reading that book that morning and the previous day. In the morning of sitting and talking to a bunch of Australian police, I really had the experience of watching my own mind battle myself and want to defend myself and get angry and revert to my old patterns of behavior. And instead I just calmly sat there explaining what had happened and feeling the power in non-reactivity and the power of not getting angry and the power of realising that these guys were just doing their jobs. And that was one of those life-changing moments. I've probably bought that book a dozen times and gifted it to people who were in need. I don't give them [a copy of] How To Understand The Music Business; I give them the Seung Sahn letters.

He also wrote this book, The Compass Of Zen. I wouldn't recommend starting with The Compass Of Zen. I would recommend starting with the letters. Because you have totally normal people dealing with totally normal problems. "I don't know what to do with my life. My parents don't fucking understand me. I keep being distracted." These are kids in the sixties and seventies. The problems are all the same. It takes no intellectual stretch to read these letters that these kids wrote to their Zen teacher, or a teacher they saw at a talk. And he writes back these beautiful, considered, really great, no-bullshit answers about what's important. He actually influenced my correspondence style. I read those books often, and I notice when my writing style tries to mimic it. I start speaking in these short, terse sentences as if I were a Korean monk who didn't speak great English.

QUOTE | Boldly Do Things Which You May Previously Never Thought of Doing

“I'd like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did. But I fear that you will ignore my advice. You think that I am stubborn, but you are even more stubborn than me. You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every American should see at least once in his life. But for some reason incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day. I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover.

Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience.

You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.

My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.”

― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

Post-Run Yoga Flexibility Routine

QUOTE | When we lose one blessing

"When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place." - C.S. Lewis

POETRY | Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

LIFE | Dim Sum in the Morning, Laundry in the Afternoon

Today is Vesak Day, as well as one of those rare days when my brother and myself are not working at the same time. The whole family went down this morning for a bit of dim sum brunch. We used to have dim sum as a family many years ago, when I was still a teenager. We have stopped doing things together for a long time.

At the end of the meal, my mom brought out tissue paper and handed it out to everyone. Our family have a bad habit - my dad, my brother and myself - none of us ever learnt the habit of bring tissue paper out; mom always was the one to bring the tissue.

My mom has early on-set dementia. She is not the same person I grew up with. It has been difficult these last few years. These days I feel more like an adult, trying to mother my mother. But this morning, she still does what she used to do - hand out the tissues.

Sadly life will always have its moment. This afternoon, my mom and I argued over the laundry again. Seems like we are always arguing about this absurd need for me to have autonomy over my laundry. My laundry is the metaphor for my relationship with my mom. I want to live my life on my rules. All I want is for her to leave me alone - and she always replies, "But she is my daughter!"

My mom will never let me go. It is both good and bad. It is neither good or bad. It is what it is. Our parents can only love us the way they have been taught, the way they know how.

Essay from Haruki Murakami: BOSTON, FROM ONE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD WHO CALLS HIMSELF A RUNNER

Haruki Murakami's essay on the Boston Marathon bombing, here. He still amazes me, not just as a writer, but now that I started running, I am somewhat in awe that he ran the Boston Marathon six times. He ran marathons all over the world, at Athens, Chicago, New York, Honolulu - and of course Boston. He has a personal fondness for the Boston Marathon. This essay reminds me that I have yet to read his book on running, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

To overcome this kind of trauma takes time, time during which we need to look ahead positively. Hiding the wounds, or searching for a dramatic cure, won’t lead to any real solution. Seeking revenge won’t bring relief, either. We need to remember the wounds, never turn our gaze away from the pain, and—honestly, conscientiously, quietly—accumulate our own histories. It may take time, but time is our ally.

For me, it’s through running, running every single day, that I grieve for those whose lives were lost and for those who were injured on Boylston Street. This is the only personal message I can send them. I know it’s not much, but I hope that my voice gets through. I hope, too, that the Boston Marathon will recover from its wounds, and that those twenty-six miles will again seem beautiful, natural, free.

Running to Train Myself

“If you’re trying to defeat the human spirit, marathoners are the wrong group to target.”

I read this quote on Facebook soon after the Boston Marathon bombing. Since I've been running, I am only feeling the amount of discipline and will it takes to train for a marathon. To complete 26.2 miles in the Boston Qualifying time takes more than running 26.2 miles. It takes years of focused practice, who knows how many thousands of miles ran - not to mention the aches and pains that came with it all. Marathon runners take all of this in, and they still continue.

This is why I want to continue running. This is a training of will. If I can do this, I know I can do anything. I'm tired of giving up. Tired of not following through. Tired of letting myself down.

Saw the News about the Boston Marathon Bombing Today

I was up around 4 am this morning. I saw all the posts on Facebook about the bombing at the Boston Marathon. I went to check on a friend who lived in Boston (she's ok). Checked in with my running group, and there's a lot of emotions running about the bombing. Just last night, some of the girls in my running group were talking about making the qualifying time for the Boston Marathon.

So, I did what felt right this morning - I went out for a 3 miles run. I try to keep the people who were affected by the bombing in my thoughts as I run - because things like these are not supposed to happen at the Boston Marathon. Because the Boston Marathon is about running - and your politics, skin colour, religion and any other differences is not supposed to matter there. Then I found my thoughts going out to the people I care about, and I wondered if they are ok. And I thought about the people that I care about - but we no longer speak, and I wished we could speak again so that I would know if they are okay.

More than anything else, I want people to be ok.

Picked this up today

Went to the bookstore today.

Forgiveness by David Whyte

Forgiveness is a heartache, a giving away, and ultimately the refusal to be possessive about the original wound; it is the act of letting the wound have its own life so that it can heal, mostly by re-imagining itself, and not by our telling the story again and again from the point of the one who carries the hurt.

Forgiveness is a heartache and difficult to achieve because strangely, it not only refuses to eliminate the original wound, but actually draws us closer to its source. To approach forgiveness is to close in on the nature of the hurt itself, the only remedy being, as we approach its raw center, to re-imagine our relation to it.

It may be that the part of us that was struck and hurt can never forgive, and that strangely, forgive- ness never arises from the part of us that was actually wounded. The wounded self may be the part of us incapable of forgetting, and perhaps, not actually meant to forget, as if, like the foundational dynamics of the physiological immune system our psychological defenses must remember and organize against any future attacks – after all, the identity of the one who must forgive is actually founded on the very fact of having being wounded.

Stranger still, it is that wounded, branded, un-forgetting part of us that eventually makes forgiveness an act of compassion rather than one of simple forgetting. To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt, to mature and bring to fruition an identity that can put its arm, not only around the afflicted one within but also around the memories seared within us by the original blow and through a kind of psychological virtuosity, extend our understanding to the one who first delivered it.

Forgiveness is a skill, a way of preserving clarity, sanity and generosity in an individual life, a beautiful way of shaping the mind to a future we want for ourselves; an admittance that if forgiveness comes through understanding, and if understanding is just a matter of time and application then we might as well begin forgiving right at the beginning of any drama rather than put ourselves through the full cycle of festering, incapacitation, reluctant healing and eventual blessing.

To forgive is to put oneself in a larger gravitational field of experience than the one that first seemed to hurt us. We re-imagine ourselves in the light of our maturity and we re-imagine the past in the light of our new identity, allowing ourselves to be gifted by a story larger than the story that first hurt us and left us bereft.

At the end of life, the wish to be forgiven is ultimately the chief desire of almost every human being. In refusing to wait; in extending forgiveness to others now; we begin the long journey of becoming the person who will be large enough, able enough and generous enough to receive, at the very end, that absolution ourselves.

Remember

I am blogging this on my iPhone in Bangkok, and it feels somewhat restrictive. But sometimes the emotions hit you and you need to let it out.

I am in Bangkok for a long weekend to celebrate my birthday. The last two birthdays haven't been that great. This year I wanted to set aside some personal time for reflection and retreat.

I have a feeling the universe is trying to communicate with me again. Which is good - even if the message is cryptic. While I was trying to figure out what the universe wants of me, and how things have been for me the last year, I suddenly remember this young lady who was like a little sister. She passed away two years ago from complications from her lupus. As her lungs and heart was failing, she start writing notes to her friends. We all received notes from her soon after her death. I remember the news of her death came 10 days before my birthday. Then her final note to me. I almost cried when I read her note, but I was in public and I didn't want to cry amongst strangers.

in her note, she reminded me how once, when she was in a dark place because of a family bereavement, I was there for her as a friend. I didn't think much of it, but it had meant a lot to her, to know someone was willing to be there with her. In her note, she told me this, that it didn't matter what she meant to me, she wanted me to know what I meant to her.

She passed away on March 14, 2011. I just realised that I forgot her death anniversary this year. It has only been two years and I forgot her.

I am going to remember her, especially what she taught me.

None of us know how much time we really have left in this world. Honestly, if we are suddenly given only one year to live, would all the bitter grievances and past quarrels matter? No. I just know if I only have a short time to put my affairs in order, I want to spend it putting things right. I want to let the people in my life know what they
mean to me. And it doesn't matter if they loved me back. Doesn't matter anymore.

Given enough time, nothing matters anymore except the kindness.

BOOK | Finding Freedom by Jarvis Jay Masters

I want to leave my writing behind for when I am gone and the question of who I was enters people's minds. If I am executed, there will be some who believe I deserved it. But those who want to try to make sense of it will see, through my writing, a human being who made mistakes. Maybe my writing will at least help them see me as someone who felt, loved, and cared, someone who wanted to know for himself who he was. My writing will hopefully show those people that they could easily have been me.
- Jarvis Jay Masters, Finding Freedom

I have spent some time thinking about what to blog after reading Jarvis Jay Master's Finding Freedom. For one thing, the writing is simple, not exactly literary, but it felt like a breath of fresh air. Here was a man thrown into prison. As a man on death's row, society has marked him as condemned. Yet there exists a yearning to know himself truly. Even a death sentence cannot diminish the dignity of a life, nor put out the desire for life. It reminded me of something George Orwell wrote in his essay, "A Hanging":

It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working--bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming--all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned--reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone--one mind less, one world less.

In the midst of great suffering, there rises the yearning to really know yourself. In his simple language, Jarvis articulated an extraordinary capacity for self-awareness. He folds his blanket every morning, and sits down on it for his meditation. Even in the midst of the violence of his surrounding, he showed that it is still possible for a kind of peace within. He struggles with it, and prison is a place where trying to help someone might just get him killed. Yet he still makes the effort. He shows up for his life.

After reading Jarvis's story, all I really had to ask myself was this: what is my excuse for not practicing wholeheartedly? Can my circumstances be more difficult than Jarvis'? Have I showed up for my life, like Jarvis did for his?

Gratitude | Getting my run in tonight

I admit I didn't feel like running today. I did a bit of cycling, which I had intended to compensate for the non-running, even though I was supposed to do a long run this weekend. Sometimes you just struggle against the run.

Somewhere along the way, I got myself outside at 9 pm and just ran. Clocked 3.47 miles. Not a lot, but it's great considering just last October, I was breathless after 5 minutes of running. Running is as much a mind exercise. I had intended to run longer, but the moment I came out from the park connector, my mind just told myself I am done. And I was. The mind has strategies to keep the body from tiring itself out. But that's okay. I ended up doing some grocery shopping before heading home.

Let us just be grateful for those days when you did not want to do something, but you did it anyway, because you need to keep your word to yourself. When I keep faith with myself, I align my actions with my intentions. That's who I want to be. Little by little, just by showing up. Not a big deal to run 3 miles, I know. But it's one step forward in a life. That's what it means. And that's important.

(Night scene from my run earlier)

Dr Brene Brown Speaks

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” —Theodore Roosevelt

I had the good fortune to attend Dr Brene Brown's talk this afternoon. Her TED talk helped me reconsider the way I had been living my life - that the armour I kept around myself has not served me. It has in fact kept me disconnected, diminished my life. But along the way, I also learned just how courageous I am, in those moments when I did risk, when I did dare greatly. As Dr Brown reminded us this afternoon, it is not the critic who counts. It is the one who shows up, who puts herself in the arena that truly counts. You can't change others - and you shouldn't. But what you can do is to live your truth courageous, wholeheartedly - and maybe - just maybe, you might inspire others to what to live their own lives wholeheartedly.

Live your truth. Just show up for your own life every day.

Gratitude | Toilet! And Running.

I finished a 5K run this morning and the first thing on my mind was, "NEED TOILET!" Thankfully the event venue had several facilities and I could get business sone easily. I know it's crazy to be thankful for toilets, but hell - I am thankful for my legs and knees that brought me through the finish line safely and pain-free. But I will never take toilets for granted. Especially when it's urgent.

Since we are talking about my run, here's a picture of my Finisher Medal. Yes, it's pink. I have noticed. It's a run in celebration of the International Women's Day. I never understand why they think Pink is appropriate for ALL women.

I was expecting some muscle aches from this morning's run. There will probably be some discomfort around the knees for a while, but so far I can walk with no pain. My shins are a little sore when I press them, but it's otherwise ok. My legs are getting used to the distance I have been running.

I am thankful for the positivity that running brought into my life. It is probably one of the best decisions I made for myself. Running in the morning created some space in my life. Getting up at 4:30 am, I do yoga as warm-up. I eat breakfast more frequently these days. Most of all, after yoga and running, I am in the frame of mind for meditate. I am grateful for all of these.

Run. It might change your life.

Gratitude | Flu bug Allows Reading Time

I've been fighting a flu bug over the weekend. When I say "fighting", I mean it's the kind of flu bug that's half way there. You're not sick enough to call in sick at work, you can still function somewhat, but you are suffering and you know you are going to get worse down the road.

Anyway, I decided to stop fighting it and brought my ass to the doctor's office. I am not the only one sick though. I went to the doctor's office around 10am and only done around 3:30pm. I spent the time reading while I was waiting, which I realise is something I have not allowed myself to do for a while.

Everything can be a blessing. So let us just be grateful for some extra reading time. Reading material included below:

Gratitude | Cajun Kings with Good Friends

I'm not the sort to keep in touch with people. It just feels like I pass through life trying too hard to remain unattached. But some people stay with me. I had a dinner date with some old friends who used to be colleagues. We have all moved on in life, but we stayed in touch. Sometimes, people stay in your life to remind you that you can be loved, in spite of yourself. I had a good time tonight dining on Cajun style seafood, gumbo, frog legs, crabs and prawns. I am so full. I am thankful for time spent with people who accept me for who I am, even if they may not always agree with me.

“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?” ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Gratitude | Hainanese Chicken Rice @ Tanglin Halt

This plate of chicken rice made me happy and thankful this morning. Why? Because it reminded me of the simple pleasures of home. I was working in Dubai a long time ago. I was so far from home and something as simple as this plate of chicken rice would be unavailable. Home to me is that blend of many flavours and many sights and sounds. Things have changed in Singapore the last few years. It's beginning to feel less like the place I grew up in. Then something familiar like being able to sit in a hawker centre with no air conditioning to enjoy a plate of chicken rice - it reminds me I am home. If it doesn't make sense to you, you probably are not Singaporeans. And this is why it is so important. It's a shared experience between me and my countrymen. This is what defines us.

I am thankful to be home. I am thankful for this plate of home.

RUNNING | Safari Zoo Run 2013

So I've been pretty quiet recently. Good news is - my left knee seems to have healed somewhat. I can run again, but I'm taking things slow. I also just completed my first 6K run of the year today. It's the Safari Zoo Run 2013, in memory of our grand dame, Ah Meng. (I blogged about her passing here)

I like animals, although I have to admit I haven't been to the zoo in a long time. But a Sunday spent running in the zoo? Awesome way to spend a Sunday, I say!

As expected, it was a lovely Sunday run, lots of families bringing their children along. I really admire the parents that sign their kids up for runs like these. I think it beats going to the malls on weekend, where you just shop and purchase things. We need to set better examples to children on the fun of running and just moving. And there's also the animals. I like the animals, especially the big cats.

[The tiger was pacing back and forth restlessly. I was in the middle of the run, but decided to stop to take a picture]

It was a relaxing run. No competition. We ran through the zoo, and every now and then when we saw the animals, people would stop to take pictures. I did too. :)

I have to confess though: I haven't been to the zoo since I was a student and we did field trips to the zoo. I was expecting all fresh air and nature for today's run. Instead, it was the smell of animals and manure. There were also manure on the grounds. Yeah, welcome to the real world. But all it well.

It started to rain towards the last leg of the run, but it didn't dampen our mood. I went back to the zoo after my run to check out the other animals. It was fun and very wet. Now my muscles are aching. I will take it easy tomorrow.

Meanwhile, check out my finisher medal for today's run:

POEM | Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

-- David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You 
     © 2003 Many Rivers Press

2013 | Sunday Exercise

It was raining heavily since 11 am today. I ended up missing yoga class, and went to the library instead. Yes, I am that geek. I picked up a few books on running, 2 Jillian Michaels workout DVDs and the book by Jarvis Jay Masters, Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row. I heard about Jarvis from a lecture by Pema Chodron. She talked about his life, how he was from a broken home, was fostered out to multiple families when he was young, and ended up in prison when he was 19. He was later charged with the murder of a prison guard - a crime he did not actually commit. Th extraordinary part of the story, if extraordinary is the right word, is how he came to take refuge in the dharma, studying first with the Tibetan master Chagdud Tulku and then with Pema Chödrön. Jarvis's story fascinated me for a while, because it speaks so powerfully of the possibility choosing differently.

The knee is still in pain. I am getting annoyed, and worried about how long term this knee condition will be. It's a bad idea to fight with your own body, but I don't want to be an invalid just because of my knee. I did a 37 mins workout earlier today using one of the Jillian Michaels DVD. It helped me feel like I am still on track with my fitness plans, even though I did not make it to yoga class, or run. I just need to feel like I am doing something actively for myself.

2013 Reading List

Trying to get my reading more organised. I have been starting too many books without finishing them the past year.

1. January - Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers • Karyl McBride, PhD
2. February - Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation • Sharon Salzberg
   True Refuge • Tara Brach
3. March - A Year to Live: How to Live This Year As If It Were Your Last • Stephen Levine
4. April - The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling • Stephen Cope
5. May - Loving What Is • Byron Katie

2013 | 28 Day Meditation Challenge

It's back again - Sharon Salzberg's 28-Day Meditation Challenge. I'm taking it again. Anyone can do it. You just commit to 28 days straight of daily meditation, and then let's see how to move forward from there.

To be honest, I don't feel very prepared for this challenge. But then I ask myself: What do you need to prepare except to just sit?

Lately life has been feeling this way - of not being ready, of struggling to catch up. I'm good though. I am grateful for the direction I am heading.

Sharon Salzberg: