Transformations

I ran 7.5 miles today, to cap off a 55 mile week. I have never run 55 miles a week.

I have had 4 transforming experiences in my life. The first was the Marine Corps. I grew up in another place at another time. In the Marines, I learned my relation to being a male American in the Twentieth Century. In engineering school, I learned the relation of my analytical mind to of my essentially poetic mind. In the marathon I learned my relation with my body, and with hunger, exhaustion and transcendence. Finally in Buddhism I learned my relation to other living beings and the world.


This pursuit of a faster marathon has elements of transcendence. I do not know where it will take me.