Updated
7-30-2010

total training miles 2010: 856 total miles: 7318 avg. speed 15 mph
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Bed Time Story

7-21-2010

This Journey

Wonderful and often perplexing, this journey in which each new step has the potential, every image like a mysteriously wrapped givt. Every person can deflect or be deflected, spin or be spun, or simply change the chemistry of the local ambience. Each thing can remind, instill, shape. This is a journey through the land of change, a delicious interlude in the endless expanse of the unchanging.

Enjoy.

7-19-2010

Image

Meditating through my solar plexus I feel the pain. Elevating it to my third eye I feel nothing, but light suddenly crystallizes into a winter scene. I am in a place I know, about six miles from home, on foot on a paved road. I am looking into a small clearing where dead weeds and sumac are sticking up out of about a foot and a half of snow. The sky is cloudy, the color of milk, and it is just starting to snow. I know it is going to be a blizzard. I wish I had my bicycle.

7-17-2010

Chakra 101

I should tell someone that today I was introduced to my Chakras. So I'll tell you. I found myself well attuned to my crown, third eye and solar plexus, the rest, not so much. Work to do, work to do.

7-15-2010

The Most Powerful

You can sing and you can love. There is joy to be had. It is okay to remember, but remember without judgment. Love you first. There is a pure love beyond simple affection, infatuation or lust. You can find it. It lives within you. It is the most powerful thing in the universe.

7-6-2010

It Is All Love

To have a friend, to keep a friend, to attact a friend - it is all love, and the price of love is loss, at least here. Yet the love continues forever, if you can dig down deep within yourself and really find it, underneath the jealousy, desire and fear. Even hope can get in the way. But deep inside you it is there as it is in all of us. I hope you find it. Your love is the most precious of all forces.

7-2-2010

Loving What Is

Appreciation of the mundane is an art I aspire to master. Being present in the irritating moment is a skill I wish to acquire. Loving what is, I will succeed and progress.

6-30-2010

Revisiting Youth

Youth of the body can be revisited from time to time, like a favorite vacation spot. Yet when you return, the porch swing seems so small - not grand as it did before. You look upon your former self with a tolerant love not unlike that you have for your child. And so you are.

6-23-2010

Home

The difficult home is still a home.

6-15-2010

Revisiting a Deep Wound

She came to let me know that your earliest, deepest hurt goes with you and never really leaves. Though I cried, I bested my shame and did what I had to do. Still, it's there. Best befriend it, love it, be one with it.

6-12-2010

Head Wind

I rode west, the wind in my face, rode northeast, the wind was still in my face. Some days are like that. The only answer: shift down and keep pedaling. You want poetry, but everywhere you turn there's only hardware? Just keep on. The wind's gotta change sooner or later.

6-8-2010

Heard Her

She said that if you keep pulling yourself back into the present moment, eventually you'll learn to live there. That's where I'm going.

6-2-2010

Surrounded

Though surrounded I will persevere. I will not wilt or decay. I will resolutely remain detached, open and receptive. I will connect with faster energy and manifest change.

5-31-2010

Want Detachment

I have pledged to remain detached, to observe the pain of my detachment objectively, meditatively. Grateful for all the wonderful people who comfort me, I strive for the ideal.

Some people will not tell you what they want. Some people cannot tell you what they want. Some people don't know what they want. Some people know exactly what they want and have no problem telling you.

Which are you?

5-30-2010

Becoming Thoughts

Thoughts become. Think them and see, but you cannot just expect them usually to just (poof). Patience, positivism and faith. Then you won't need charity. Hope? Maybe.

5-29-2010

Small Packages

There was time and glory, glorious time stretching away into a luxuriously distant future. But the future arrived in many small, disappointing packages for a long time. Learning to see these small disappointments as precious was perhaps my most important lesson.

5-24-2010

Pig Call

Thank you for your order. Thank you for bringing order. Let order be brought. I am only an ear for your voice, a mirror and a recording device. See you in me? There you are. Reflecting, I see only myself. I am the Universe. Ask me anything. Three out of five? Okay, so sue me. Sue was my friend, anyway. Remember, if you sue, you'll be the sue-er. Of course, I'll be the sue-ee.

5-22-2010

Closed

Doors closed, closing, I close them, they are closed. I am enclosed. Resisting only shrinks my space. I wait peacefully for the Creative to loose my bonds. Inside, I quiet the raging storm. Inside, I turn aside from grief.

5-20-2010

Screw

The screw, the inclined plane, simple machine: the ramp, climbing every upward in a circular path, reaches its destination in tightness. Tightly screwed, tension keeps it from coming undone. How contrary!

5-18-2010

The Sound of Expectancy

An illusion, ill used, elusive, a loose sieve, sifting, shifting, gone: so it goes, so it went. Within the event nonexistent time neither passes nor stands still. My ageless face smiles forever. You are there, unknown, untracked and intractable, a tractor of machinery clanking with expectancy. Give it up. Expect nothing and everything will come.

5-17-2010

Searching

Searching for the missing, the survivors, I dart in circles grasping air. What was I looking for? Why did I come here? How deep is this hole? Shall I talk more to this wall?

5-11-2010

Location Location Location

I found myself. I was at work, ironically. Somehow I turned the corner and there I was. As I am fond of saying, no matter where you go, there you are. Here and there are relative to nothing, so I was never lost or found. I was never anywhere and always everywhere. I accept this without understanding, like relativity.

5-8-2010

Raining in my Soul

In these moments as I am upbraided like a rag against a floor I withdraw to my borders and look within. In a while I must upbraid a rag against a floor, or some such.

The baby on his daddy's tummy, facing outward toward the world, regards me with a gently flailing curiosity. I smile. The daddy is getting his turn carrying, now that pregnancy has fulfilled its promise. Outside, shielded by the dad's vast umbrella, everything must look so wonderful and strange. I know it does to me.

5-5-2010

Roll and Wake

At night a zoetrope of experience flashes in rapid-fire images. I roll and wake, shift, and wake; rise believing it is time to rise, only to find a single digit hour noted on the LED; lie down, roll and wake, wake and shift. The alarm sounds a single beep and I silence it silently in a single motion, rising wondering if this is reality. I wash my face. It is. Forced to the whole distance, I arrive refreshed and glad. Meant to be.

5-4-2010

Smile-less Miles

In my miles there are no smiles for me today, only for others. Sometimes I’m in the smile crossfire and get a vicarious smile. One lady looks at me like, “How dare you be riding your bicycle where I want to jay walk?” I’m sorry. There is a flow someplace they say. I remember it. The vortex will draw me. Yet now I can only coast down this hill and pedal up the next, waiting. I try to be at peace. I imagine a poet who rides a bike, like me, likes me, and in me sees more of what they want than what they do not. I wish to go camping alone, far away in the anonymous woods, where not a word will pass my lips all day.

5-1-2010

Soul-ular Matter

Learning, the Eternal learns. Teaching, the Eternal teaches. So we, internal dialog of the Eternal, are the voices in our head, the Universal consciousness. Apply your lessons learned. Alive, the Eternal grows, changes. Change is the flow of life, the very stuff, that sweet marshmallow filling, sensual delight or pain in the tooth. We are in a sense wounded, the gaps between us true illusion, like imaginary wounds, ghost pain. Merging souls leave some soul-ular matter mixed in each other and when separating in this physical existence there is a tearing sensation felt keenly in the heart; merging in this existence is a healing, mending wholeness also felt keenly. This is what I mean when I say my heart is yours.

4-24-2010

Anger Demon

There is a demon that lives in my knee. It's name is anger. The commute is familiar roads and sometimes the gray matter will wander.

My anger is my child. I love my anger. I hold it in my arms and comfort it. It quiets.

I'm sure my knee will feel better in a couple of days.

4-21-2010

Water

On the beach the tide comes in. Beneath the water crabs sleep. Seaweed washes up on shore, tangled with life. Later the tide recedes and the crabs clean up. My canoe sits in the yard upside down. Still the river, never still, a surface on which to float, blown by the wind like a giant leaf, or locomotive paddling, a gentle gurgle of motion, skating fluidly, slow progress with a duck’s eye view. Turtles keep lookout. Herons glide or wade on stilts, the graceful curve of neck and spear-like beak. On the bridge, cyclists pass overhead as we glide beneath their tires.

What does water remind me of? You know.

4-15-2010

Bike the Hell

I will bike like hell home tonight to make a meeting, bike so that my lungs burn and my legs scream for mercy, but none will come for I have none to give. I know what they’ve got and I need it all today, single-minded concentration navigating traffic, dodging, weaving, sneaking, sprinting, watching the road surface, watching out, and ignoring my watch. Meanwhile I race in this timeline, turning tight, quick and agile, adrenal rush. I am an animal, one purpose, one goal, no extraneous thought. Somewhere sometime I sit among the trees in contemplation, the longevity of their procreation by the thousands, the rare child surviving the parent’s shade to conquer all and supplant, usurp, thrive. By opportunity I run the red light, I clip in, I shift, pedal, breathe. Other cyclists pass me, I pass them, it does not matter. I have nothing to prove.

Actually it didn't happen like that. I went out all psyched, but it was about 45 degrees with a head wind of about 15 mph, so it occurred to me I was just in time for the train with about two minutes to spare. Still, I got to ride through Kenmore Square at rush hour. What a rush!

4-14-2010

My Name Is Forgotten

Invisible yet not completely inaudible I have my say in my inimitable way, a small way, a word. Earthly delights abound. Bounding, I cover ground. Grounded, I fold my wings. These things I sense with a physicality mock my immobility, a stationary nobility, a rose of prose, economy of motion. To shun joy in unfitted self sacrifice suffices only to insult the resultantly exultant from revelation. I revel in fun, a disheveled pun, a shelved gun. Discarded I can no longer find my cards. My name is 'forgotten.' What's yours?

4-7-2010

Regarding the Permutations

Regarding the permutations of surviving this, for a time I was “The Hardware Weasel, ferreting out that hard-to-find-hardware for you.” I actually built a kind of national presence within the incestuous confines of the hardware industry, my only competition being some guy in Texas known as, “The Weasel.” But I was “The Hardware Weasel,” special and unique, sort of. I added “The Hardware Weasel, ferreting out that hard-to-find-hardware for you” to my e-mail signature. It was my new identity, a kind of confession: “Hello. I’m Tom Rubenoff. I’m a weasel.” I looked into a twelve step program for weasels, but there was none that I could find. Eventually I grew bored with the whole weasel thing and moved on, but a nickname will crop up here and there unbidden nevertheless. There is still at least one or two hardware guys who refer to me as “Weasel.” I take it as a compliment.

4-6-2010

Take it

Where you are is a step on your path, an eternal moment in that fiction called time wherein we count the nonexistent and create the imaginary. Do it now. You want. Why? An electrical impulse sparks in that gray slush inside your skull and ricochets down your spinal cord firing off muscular contractions that maintain balance and move your foot forward, taking the next step. Want is the spark. Want and move, wantonly. Want only what you love. Love only what you want. Propelled forward on this mystery voyage by something ethereal and untouchable, touch and feel, taste and smell, enjoy and experience the next step. Take it.

4-3-2010

I Will

I will not say there was a time. Time is a construct, an invention, sleight of mind. We invented it to define ourselves because we can. There will not be a time. There will be. We will be. You and I are one, were one, will be one. How can we turn a weapon upon ourselves? How can we, when our dearest love is us? The sky beckons, I follow. This is no place to be. Only with you is the only place, with you and not without. Hold me round, a circle in your arms and eye, a contained thing for an instant so that in being separate for this moment we can be together. We cannot be both one and together. Yet perhaps we can.

Inferring perspective I await

Your grand design, your whim

Your indifference, your

Love.