WICKED RUN PRESS

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Life of Pi ~ Book Before Movie

Repeat after me: "Book before movie. Book before movie."

The novel ‘Life of Pi’ was only on my distant radar, until I saw the stunning scenes of this mega-3d movie made by Ang-lee, my brother by another mother. Of course, I wanted to go ‘book first, movie second’, since the other way around just doesn’t work as well, so I jumped into the novel to free myself to see the movie.

The Life of PI is the story of a young man, a religious studies and zoology major in college, who sees truths and beauty in 3 major religions so chooses to follow all of them. This spiritual world gets hammered and tested when a shipwreck leaves him lost at sea on a lifeboat along with some of the animals his father was transporting to sell to other zoos.

The novel was simply tremendous. The writing was both easily digestible and yet filled with deeper implications. Piscine’s, or “Pi’s” thought patterns were intriguing, including his initial inquisitiveness and near naivety before the shipwreck, to his brains struggle for survival and the delirium that follows, to his post-rescue riddling of the insurance representatives investigating the cause of the crash. (This is not a spoiler, since the reader knows right up front that Pi survives.)

This novel can be read simply for an action, intrigue, and survival story. The bulk of the story is a very entertaining 'lost at sea' struggle that gets as gritty as any you've ever seen or read about. But my guess is there are tons of English professors who would love to see their students turn in papers with the following, deeper subject as their topics:

~Symbolism of the Hyena, the Orangutan, the Frenchman, and especially, Richard Parker The Tiger.

Fear, nature, the Id or duality of man, childhood demons conquered (you’re going to be a goat fed to the tiger, his brother tells him)

~Compare the Tiger in Life of Pi to the volleyball ‘Wilson’ in Castaway.

Okay, you may just get some laughs and nothing higher than a B+ if you write this paper.

~Compare and contrast life before and after the boat, compare and contrast life on the boat to life on the island.

~Role of carnivores versus omnivores in the novel.

~Nature of storytelling itself.

Both in Pi’s early desire to compare and contrast the mythology of major religion, to his story of how he survived the shipwreck, stories are presented as providing meaning and creating larger than life myths which lead to spiritual faith. (Pi laments the lack of more grandiose stories in Christianity). Does belief in a story make it more or less true? When you are trying to tell the truth, is it best to do so in Fiction?

Ah, to be in school again and spend hours writing such a paper into the wee hours of the night. Good for me, I can just enjoy and think as deep or shallow as I’d like.

Among many others, one thing that has stuck with me is the things Pi had to do to get by. Eating animals as part of survival is described as both barbaric and instinctual, and the degree of Pi’s desperate hunger leads to desperate measures. While reading, I made some out loud gasps at some of the ways Pi survived, causing others in the room with me to turn their heads and wonder what was on my kindle.

But upon completing the novel and still savoring its taste, I found myself noticing all the food I waste and imagining what I would eat ‘if I really had to’. Like Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” Life of Pi maybe aimed for the heart but accidently hit the stomach as well.

The odd thing is, many readers will discuss back and forth what was real and what wasn’t real in the novel, but I like to believe, as I think the author and Pi himself believe, that it doesn’t matter and it misses the point. Truth exists in the eye of the storyteller and the observer, and in the mind of the reader, so if you read about it, saw it in your minds eye, then it happened.

This novel fired on all cylinders, and I’m going to be waving it under the noses of readers everywhere. And just like Tom Hanks who missed Wilson, and Pi who misses his tiger, I miss reading this novel each night. At least I still have the movie.

Mark Matthews,

Author of Stray and The Jade Rabbit

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

So, Too Much Running Can Kill You? Bury Me With My Shoes On Then

"You better get yourself together. Pretty soon you're going to be dead." ~John Lennon, Instant Karma

"Lord my body has been a good friend, but I won't'need it when I reach the end" ~ Cat Stevens, Miles From Nowhere

"I'm a rocket man, burning up my fuel up here alone." ~That Volkswagon commercial

There's a handful of articles rippling through the running world about a study that shows running endurance races and over 25 miles per week can lead to an early death and a shortened lifespan. In the Wall Street Journal, there is "One Running Shoe In The Grave" and in Today's Health there is "Running Farther, Faster, And Longer Can Kill You."

If you are a runner, you have already had non-running folks tell you how running is bad for you. I've had smokers tell me I'm going to have a heart attack, and some BMI champs warn me about my future of knee replacements. Now they have this article to wave in your face, "See, go ahead and run those miles, it's going to kill you early."

Accepting and assuming the study is valid, my response is:

Well, lets hope so. That's how it should be. Because, damn it, it wouldn't be natural to have us live that long after how long we have already really lived.

When you're running, you squeeze more life out of living than might be natural. You're twisting time and jumping in the matrix where things happen at a different speed.

You didn't go for an hours run, your brain experienced emotions and went on tangents and got lost in running daydreams that lasted way more than an hour. You entertained thoughts and possibilities that spanned the entire universe. You jumped into a time warp where you experienced all of the collective consciousness of mankind's history, digging deep into the primordial dirt of all existence and then coming out messy and smiling. And having lived much more deeply due to the experience. *(I'm nothing if not superlative)

Like a dream that seems to go on for days but has really only lasted seconds, a runner gets way more out of their life during the time they ran than the clock shows. So, with all that life we've lived, it makes sense that the time is up sooner for us as opposed to those who are living at a slower speed.

Think of how we measure dog years.

You ever run a 4 hour marathon and think of that as just 4 hours? Hell no, you have gone on journeys and descended into depths of yourself. Your thoughts lived multiple lifetimes and many years, and went on tangents of possible futures and possible pasts. This is no ordinary 4 hours, this is 4 Score.

Yep, if a year in a dogs life is the equivalent to a human's life times seven, I'm thinking that the time of a run is 'life lived' times twenty.

Thus, if you ran for 5 hours one week, that's really an extra 100 hours you have lived, over a year, that's 52 times 100 extra hours for a total of 5,200 extra hours we live each year. (Is anybody following me? cause I'm really out there, like I'm on a space suit in a space walk and there's only one tiny cord that's keeping me from floating away for good into oblivion)

So, lets say, at 70 years old, you've been running for 50 years. We've lived approximately 260,000 extra hours of life time, or 10,833 days and 30.4 extra years putting us at 104 years old, and not 70. Damn, who wants to live that long. Sadness of family members and loved ones and losing time with grandchildren not withstanding, take me God, I'm done here.

Or perhaps not done, perhaps we've just 'gotten out' and evolved. Perhaps having generated all that spiritual energy from running and reached such heights of transcending ourselves, that we finally have ran fast enough to shed our snake skin. We've risen out of this burdensome shell made of flesh and paid the price to evolve to a higher being. Yes, that's right, we've ran ourselves into higher ground.

Wait, um, did somebody cut my space cord?

STRAY on Amazon

The Jade Rabbit on Amazon

Monday, December 3, 2012

I Am A Bayshore Marathon Runner ~ Thanks To My Sponsor

So, after a quick debate and great feedback, I registered for the Bayshore marathon in Traverse City. I am pretty excited about this event, since it's a marathon I really wanted to run, rather than just an event that allows me to run a marathon.

Toledo and Lansing are great options and still at my fingertips for future close races, but Bayshore is scenic and apparently fantastic.

A map of the course. Follow the red line, out and back along the waterfront in Grand Traverse bay.

Birds Eye view of the Bayshore Marathon route which is run on the East side of the middle penninsula.

As for not running Ann Arbor.. well, I have some guilt. I wanted to be a supporter, an advocate, an ambassador for the event, but they couldn't make enough changes to make me stay. If they had picked a 'non-summer' date, or had made the course more Ann Arbor and less 'out and backs' down some lame areas, or just finished the run in the Big House, I would have stayed.

But, alas, I have to move on, dear Ann Arbor Marathon, but I still have your number if you can just make those changes.

The Spouses of Marathoners Support Group - Meetings Sunday at 7 a:m.

When it comes to relationships and marathoning, the challenges and expectations on spouses and families is pretty overwhelming and often overlooked. Consider the time we spend training, recovering, lamenting, talking about injuries and miles per week, foam-rolling in the middle of the living room, walking around with those empty bits of Gu wrappers stuck to our butts, putting body glide on the table that gets confused for deodorant, and of course all those multiple 2 hour plus runs. Plus the travel for the event.

Marathon partners need their own support group. They could discuss things like how to pretend they are interested in listening to you talk about your pace, how to sleep through early morning alarm clocks, and why the taper period is considered 'that time of the month,' amongst many others.

This was a large factor in my decision since I have already traveled to New York last November and I hope to again next November. Bayshore will require another long drive, but logistically it looks like it can be incorporated into a memorial day vacation where I'll go to the event, run it in about 2 hours and 92 minutes, and then drive back south to meet my family at a vacation spot.

Yes, besides our legs, the second most overwrought and taxed entity for us marathoners is our family. As much as one can try to run during lunch or during paid time off, or set our alarms and wake up at 5 am to go for a run at 6, it's still impossible to train without family support. If nothing else, they have to listen to all our neurotic ramblings. So, thanks to my sponsors! (my family) for their support.

And with that in mind, here are two Hilarious youtube videos I found of a 'marathon runner' and his perplexed wife. I know the videos have made the rounds and many have seen them before, but I just recently watched them for the first time.