jolie laide

jolie laide

I started this when I lived in Brooklyn and struggled for grace in a city that grants moments of beauty and ugliness breathtakingly close to one another. Now I live in a place where things are a different kind of ugly and the beauty is pedestrian. I struggle with that.

6.21.2006


I have been kicking my own ass, quite literally. There are bruises all up and down the back of my left thigh. I know where they come from, they come from my own sneakers.

Five days a week I carry my sneakers with me wherever I go, because my day will end with a run. My shoulder bag is not big enough for all my running gear, so I tie the laces together and hang my sneakers off the back strap of the bag. They dangle there, swinging back and forth, whacking me on the back of the leg.

I didn’t really notice this until this week. In the subway station I have a funk groove with full horn section blaring in my ears and I am stalking down the long platform like a sleek caged zoo animal. All my muscles feel strong, elongated, and I am thrilled with sensation of physical competence, elegance. And I am probably too conceited, wearing my sneakers on the outside of my bag like a proud badge of athleticism, slinking around like god’s own wonderful creation, and I realize that whack whack whack on my leg as I groove actually, really, hurts. Kinda a lot. Later I look, and for sure, I have days’ worth of round bruises from the toes of the shoes kicking my dumb, prideful ass.

My training runs are incredibly intense for this month, and after finishing, I barely have two brain cells to rub together, never mind words, and so the paucity of posting here. I won’t bore with all the numbers, ratios, extrapolations, pacing, but so far, it is going very well. I kick (my own) ass!

4 Comments:

Blogger slickaphonic said...

you kick mine, too.

luckily, i have no bruises to show for it.

yet.

3:52 PM  
Blogger ttractor said...

I hope that I kick yours more gently than I kick mine. Can one ass-kick with empathy? That's something to strive for!

7:35 PM  
Blogger slickaphonic said...

you know where i do seem accumulate real bruises is on my hips--i swish a lot when i walk and i'm awfully oblivious to those treacherous corners--stoves, crown moldings--death traps for my hips.

yes, empathetic ass-kicking is the new fever--catch it! (this is an obscure letterman reference...i'll move to nyc and become a man if you get it)

11:32 PM  
Blogger ttractor said...

save your pennies for something other than a sex change operation...TV references tend to go right over my head.

ow, pokey corners. But I have a really nice set of multi-colored highlighters and we can still play "artfully embellish that bruise!"

6:14 AM  

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