Lights and Rows, Lights and Lines

I apologize for the lack of updates this past week. It has been fairly hectic, but the good news is that I am caught up on all of my course work.

I climbed the Arc de Triumph yesterday. It was an utterly amazing sight. I had climbed through the ancient structure for three minutes along a spiral staircase. Higher and higher, ever pursuing something at the very top that I wasn't quite sure what it was. And then I got there.

The edges of the earth struck me first. Sunset was old by this point and it looked like embers were cooling somewhere in the west leaving behind the slowly radiating pinks and reds. And the winds were brisk and sweet. Somewhere off, beyond the Paris limits, small hills would rise completely covered in houses and churches. Some house lights were beginning to come to life. The air up there was truly something else.

I walked to the very edge where the obtrusive fence kept me from 167 feet of free fall. And there they were- the buzzings lines alight with commuters and visitors. Café lights and headlights all joined these strings of illumination spreading out across the city. There weren't black spaces where there were no lights. Instead, the building façades were just the sweetest shade of blue. And it all just hummed along tot he tune that is Paris.

And in the center of my vision was that tower- i think its called Eiffel or something. Yes all these strings of light seemed to run into it and run up to the top. Its peak was etched against the navy sky. I'll post pictures, but they don't do justice to that pinnacle of sights.



I still see grandma judy every day. The last Christmas I had with her, she had made me a small day planner that I remember thinking "Well damn, I just bought a planner." Since she passed, I turned it into a running log. She always loved what I was doing and supported me. And she always wanted to come and see my meets and my races- and I lament the fact that that's no longer possible. So, every day I write my daily run in that book so that she can be a part of what I'm doing. Every experience I have is shared- this I know. Standing at the top of the Arc yesterday, she was seeing what I was seeing, but not with human eyes. I think she understands things now much more deeply than any human reason could possibly reach. I take comfort in that I am living, and thus so is she.



Sometimes I can't tell the difference
Between the sweetest moments in my life
and the most devastating sorrows.
Sometimes I wonder if maybe the difference
Between the two is actually behind my eyes-
If the difference between being destroyed
By the endless sadness between the stars
And smiling as I fall asleep while looking
Into the eyes of each little point of life
Is all about whether or not I admit to myself
That nothing is really over.