Woke up Saturday morning to clear, blue, perfect skies in Salt Lake City … and drove into pea-soup thick fog in Heber.

The course was muddy, thick, sticky, peanut-butter mud, but not the kind of peanut butter that Marit would want to use to make cookies.

Of course, the conditions wouldn’t last, and by the time the A-race rolled around, a definite line of packed, tacky mud had formed that the faster riders could use to maintain speed … Ethan’s daddy and Bart dicing for 1st and 2nd (respectively) in the A race, with Reed Wycoff pulling closer and closer for third; the A-Train beat his sponsor (and series organizer) to the line to take 1st in the 35+ A race. Kathy Sherwin kicked butt in the women’s A race, and then followed that with a respectable showing in the men’s race immediately after.

No hitches today that I recall; from an organizational perspective, the race went flawlessly.

Then off to Mama T’s for lasagna, wine (less the two bottles which I had failed to fully secure in my backpack, that shattered on impact with the road as I pulled the bag from the back seat to head inside), good friends (Jennie and mom, Dayna, Reed, Darrell, Nancy, Art and Rachel, Chris and Kathy, amongst others), good conversation, and … ummm … wind. Lots of wind. Lots of loud wind. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a house that was that windy.

Especially not in mixed company.

Got home about 8:00-ish, and promptly fell asleep on the couch about 9:00. Got up at 10:30 and crawled into bed. Woke up about 4:30 this morning … got up an puttered about for about 30 minutes before saying “screw it, I’m not getting up at 4:30 on a Sunday morning” and going back to bed. Finally woke up for real about 12:30 or so.

I guess I was tired.

BE DRUNK  

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking … ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you:

“It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

  — Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867), French Poet. Translated by Louis Simpson.

THE STORM

1

Against the stone breakwater,
Only an ominous lapping,
While the wind whines overhead,
Coming down from the mountain,
Whistling between the arbors, the winding terraces;
A thin whine of wires, a rattling and flapping of leaves,
And the small street-lamp swinging and slamming against
        the lamp pole.

Where have the people gone?
There is one light on the mountain.

2

Along the sea-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell,
The waves not yet high, but even,
Coming closer and closer upon each other;
A fine fume of rain driving in from the sea,
Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot,
The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending,
Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness.

A time to go home!—
And a child’s dirty shift billows upward out of an alley,
A cat runs from the wind as we do,
Between the whitening trees, up Santa Lucia,
Where the heavy door unlocks,
And our breath comes more easy,—
Then a crack of thunder, and the black rain runs over us, over
The flat-roofed houses, coming down in gusts, beating
The walls, the slatted windows, driving
The last watcher indoors, moving the cardplayers closer
To their cards, their anisette.

3

We creep to our bed, and its straw mattress.
We wait; we listen.
The storm lulls off, then redoubles,
Bending the trees half-way down to the ground,
Shaking loose the last wizened oranges in the orchard,
Flattening the limber carnations.

A spider eases himself down from a swaying light-bulb,
Running over the coverlet, down under the iron bedstead.
The bulb goes on and off, weakly.
Water roars into the cistern.

We lie closer on the gritty pillow,
Breathing heavily, hoping—
For the great last leap of the wave over the breakwater,
The flat boom on the beach of the towering sea-swell,
The sudden shudder as the jutting sea-cliff collapses,
And the hurricane drives the dead straw into the living pine-tree.

  — Theodore Roethke (1908 - 1963), American Poet.

LIKE A STRAIGHT SHOT AFTER MIDNITE

The toughest
thing
a man may do

is have morals

without
the threat of G.O.D.

and in spite of
the treachery of
society

American
or otherwise

expand
your heart
Grinch-like
and let the
good stuff flow out of you
like a dandelion
gone to seed
getting kicked to pieces
by rough-fingered wind

there is hope . . .
hope for me
and hope for you,
If you are not yet a zombie

So go to it
there is rum and other things
an ocean to drink
If you need a force-field,
Plenty of good tunes to shuffle
Your feet to
and plenty of well-curved wenches
that deserve to have
their names
Screamed out in the dark

  — Bradley Mason Hamlin, copyright © 2003., reprinted without permission

HEAT

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air—
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat—
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

  — H.D. [Hilda Doolittle] (1886 - 1961), American poet, leader of the Imagist movement.

ALKALINE TRIO - TIME TO WASTE

There’s someone down below blowing you a kiss
They watch from their windows
As all arms fall to their sides
And all eyes fix on the death of tomorrow
And you found everything you need
To make a life complete
Completely revolting and they have safety and relief
For sale on the street
I see you in line everyday

You had time to waste and I’m not sorry
Such a basket case, hide the cutlery
I had time to kill its dead and buried
You’ve got guts to spill but no one trustworthy

These creatures are waking up in these dark trees
Waiting like vultures
Eyes roll back turn white in time to feed
They salivate in hunger
For you and everything they need
To make a death complete
Completely unnatural and salvation lies
Behind those dead eyes that watch you while you sleep every night and…

You had time to waste and I’m not sorry
Such a basket case, hide the cutlery
I had time to kill its dead and buried
You’ve got guts to spill but no one trustworthy

You had time to waste and I’m not sorry
Such a basket case, hide the cutlery
I had time to kill its dead and buried
You’ve got guts to spill but no one trustworthy….

Sigh …

What a wasted weekend. Friday night was wonderful, but I slept in yesterday (sort of … got up at 5:00, went back to bed at 8:00, then got up at noon), expecting the storm to roll through yesterday, and the weather to clear up today so I could go skiing

But no … the storm decided to hang back, and not roll in until today, and while I don’t mind skiing when it’s snowing, flat light, wind and face-stinging ice is not my thing.

This is the side of “sprinter” that I’m not fond of. I don’t mind if it’s 60 and sunny one day, and 30 and snowy the next … but this 40-degrees and rain shit in the valley has got to stop.

It makes recreating extremely difficult.