a brighter place

All good things come to an end.

We've made the jump to Wordpress:

http://elbowroomwithaview.wordpress.com/

Thanks for reading, and hope to see you there!

Cheers,
Amanda

red flags

rain clouds on wind. sky, a navy gray. that sudden drop in temperature and every fallen petal pirouettes and lifts, airwalks accidental in an aimless panic.

a dark, growling green advances and here comes the rain, sheet after sheet in hard, clean lines, erasing every last sundried spot.

and the neighbor's beagle whines. and another's deck chair flips. and sirens resound in the eery quiet of piled, pillowed weather. mass of cloud inches closer like a bottom feeder, teething and its thorny tongue licks past.

months of nothing but slate on powder and finally, a mayfair of color. that hot, stormy scent of rain-pummeled pavement, a distant break of gleaming sun so bright it blinds as it mirrors. spring in all its unforgiving beauty and violence, inciting what's obvious—that change is upon us—and you damn better bring your umbrella.


.

channel crossing

morning a mirror of window

and water. sunlight fogging, freezer burning

through February gray, reflecting

off the Intercontinental with its full-blown

glassy panels until it’s so completely bright

it disappears.

still steeped in sleep. 
channel crossing out of Fort Point 
and walking to work with you.

narrow strait below 
gleaming like a wormhole

and diving in, back to bed—

back to dreaming into your shoulder

where planes don’t land,

aloft in sky a wide blue ribbon

cloudbread buffet.

bottomless Sonoma County sunsets

never touching

down. arrival, on repeat.

berth of bounty worlds away

from dark salt slush, thawing sharp

as a paper cut—

no semblance of winter

up here, on wings (the distance

your presence provides from

colder things)—

water mirrored in the window

seat, awash like points of light—

hands absolute as a parachute

and this, the morning, the walking

with you—the closest thing to flight.

Review of Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology

Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology
Edited by Donna Jarrell and Ira Sukrungruang

Despite a couple murderously cruel essays ("Big Game Hunters" and "Fat Like Him") this collection is exceptionally smart and touching.

From "Fat Lady Nuding": "...I remove every extraneous article of clothing and all accessories and submit myself to the doctor's scale, to the mechanical contraption that has been given the power to determine the quality of the relationship I have with my body." Brilliant.

Meanwhile, Pam Houston's writing ("Out of Habit, I Start Apologizing") is just downright beautiful, along with Stephen Kuusisto's "Fatland" as he writes about "a time in [his] life when for complicated reasons [he] became quite fat," compounded by his blindness and how that influences his body image.

We also see things from a thoughtful doctor's perspective (Atul Gawande's "The Man Who Couldn't Stop Eating") and a harsh psychiatrist's view (Irvin Yalom's "Fat Lady"), both enriching, both complicating matters as practitioners looking from the outside, in.

One of the back jacket's descriptions does this text a disservice: "...these writers make a compelling case for why we should make room for a bigger behind." That's not the message.

Instead, the focus is more about what it's like to have a bigger frame in this thin obsessed society. And what's shared is mostly heavy, not lighthearted.

rage :: rapture

It used to be so much easier to crank out an 8 miler. To swiftly jerk that notch to 10.

Instinctively, I know it's true: there is a direct correlation between marrow-deep frustration and a long distance run. Rage can fuel a tank.

At my angriest, I'd be out there with a determined, unbreakable focus that rivaled GORE-TEX in its water and wind resistance. Another hill, another footbridge and I'd level it, bulldoze by—fervid, impassioned additions of mileage. Snot rockets firing like stray bullets into innocently arching sidewalks, or defenseless brake-lit traffic, or into my own whipping knot of ponytail.

This was pure, pulsing frustration, deep-rooted down to the core. Motivator of up-and-go psychotic jogging proportions. I called myself a runner but I was running for all the wrong reasons. An exercise in releasing rage in the guise of health and fitness.

(And you're probably wondering, What. What made you so angry? It was any number of things. The wanting to be taken out to dinner and receiving a 2 am phone call instead. Three years on the college soccer team mostly relegated to the bench. That professor who so sensitively advised "You need to break out of the conditional tense, all these sentences driven by an 'I would' and 'I could'"—a resonating sign of how I wanted to be living, or more like, clearly, how I wasn't.)

Now, things are different. Amazing what happiness does. I start the weekend with John and the New York Times and a fresh zest of lemon in a midday Tom Collins. I've reclaimed the confidence to write. My frustrations are quick to fade and anger, once so all-consuming, is something to squash instead of carry for miles. In the wide, gentle band of afternoon I'm out there striding in the New Year air, gripping joy like a water bottle.

Only, here's the thing, and instinctively, I know it's true: contentment is not conducive to long distance running. Comfort can soothe the loins.

So I've been covering distance enough to look good in the dark. Signing up for 5Ks that offer free beer and chowder afterward. I've been Photoshopping saturation into my face as evidence of effort in every post-race photo I've taken.

All of this leading up to the past couple weeks and why they've been such a challenge. God love her, Ashley convinced me to sign up for a half marathon on the Cape. February 28th. A dead of winter 13.1-miler.

Last night we ran 6.5 miles, steady, talking as we went. Sometimes the roads were black-iced and difficult to traverse. The wind by the water was nothing more complicated than cold. The streetlights in harsh relief in the snow, like stakes in the heart of the earth if you were to let your mind wander to a darker place.

I honestly wasn't looking forward to this jog. But as we were stomping over the snow near MIT I couldn't help but think, How healthy. And how inspiring to have this kind of friend, someone who helps you forget what a struggle this is.

It's a lesson that I don't have to be batshit angry to go the distance. I'm learning to run for better reasons. For something closer to fitness of body and mind, and spirit.