Find a reason to speak / Learn to quiet when needs be

Mika, the true embodiment of FINLAND (for me)

Preparation, despite it’s obvious benefits of allowing the participant to gain an advancement into the desired machine seems so futile when stacked up against the creaking joint of my left knee.
I dive in.
I can’t help it.
I fall helplessly engaged into concepts / activities / relationships before taking a moment to pause, and then question whether or not “IT” is something that I truly want to be in pursuit of.
Let me turn around for a moment.

Two months ago I was asked to help a friend, whose body is in its athletic peak, to help “pace” a 15-20 mile section of the infamous (but not as infamous as I would have imagined, given it’s extreme parameters) BEAR 100, a foot race of one hundred miles. Saying (typing) it out loud just sounds preposterous. Nonetheless I had accepted the request and began to try and run a bit longer distances than my body had grown accustom to. I have thoroughly enjoyed learning to love RUNNING. I have never been an advocate of this said activity up until about 5 or 6 years ago (See archival post: HERE)

As my preparations for returning home to my FINNISH family for a small spell of time well spent and singing songs in the dark was coming to a close I challenged my brain n’ body to continue the illusion that I had so quickly fallen under, of tricking myself into thinking that 15-20 miles of running is a normal condition and that I would be just fine in its confines.  Evan and I took the flight to Helsinki (13 hours of FLIGHT) and fell into a day that felt like it should be a night (to us “fliers”). We drove to a house away from our home that I would consider a location of extreme charging and readjustment. As soon as we dropped down the bags I was off to run along the coast.
This procedure of rising, dolling myself up in short shorts and a backwards baseball cap began to be ritualistic to me while in Finland. Every morning was coupled with another run along the sea’s edge. I was feeling my body get into a better rhythm and was running 7 to 8 miles a day. NOW, this is quite a feat for a boy like me. There wasn’t a moment in my early days of livin that you could have even convinced me that I would enjoy such seemingly torturous behavior. BUT ALAS, as I would soon find out, the body changes, the mind rearranges.
By day seven my left knee was giving me quite the pain. I would push through it and continue the run in spite of its achingly annoying scream of relief. At day 9 I wasn’t able to finish even 2 miles of running before my knee screamed for reassessment.
I knew I needed to try and do something about my knee lest I do any permanent damage. I made an appt in Helsinki to see a physical therapist. As she ran her fingers along the ridge of my calf she said “STUCK”.
“Excuse me?” I responded.
“Your muscle is stuck, I can’t get it to release”
I was explained to that without proper stretching of the muscle, who’s name I am unaware of, seeing that the P. Therapist didn’t speak much English as we tried to communicate the best we knew how, given the barrier, that It (the muscle) would not be able to be properly used. She gave me some instruction on how to properly stretch and sent me on my way.

Lesson learned (I suppose)

Stretch and be stretchable. No man knows exactly what he will do on a given day, in a given situation, with the given circumstance. Allowing is such a difficult thing. CONTROL has always been at the forefront of my learned stratagem.  Two days after my visit we were on a plane back to the United States. My mind in a million places as we traveled at 500 miles per hour, toward a solar eclipse that we wouldn’t be seeing. As soon as we entered, albeit miles above the planet, the mountain standard time zone I began stacking up, in my brain, all of the responsibilities / activities / people / plans / this’s / those’s / pretend importances that I needed to attend to upon my arrival home.
The apple devices had been left at home during my visit to Finland and the freedom with which you are granted when willingly allowing yourself to grow outside of it’s venomous grasp is TRULY life-altering.
It’s early morning and I don’t have a clue of what I just wrote down on this glowing screen, but I felt it important to return to a medium in which I feel expressive. Hell, lord knows that my knee ain’t allowin’ much expression at the current moment.

Side Note: I have been anxiously awaiting the moment when I would choose to begin to write of any and all adventures, thoughts, new beginnings, old endings, death, drugs, rock n roll, children, chickens, gardens and gnomes, parenting and problems, and the like. I suppose that Finland gave me some battery power (see: battery (the energy drink))

My homecoming Boy, Oliver #radboyzonly

Show me the way, lady. My darlin: Emma-Rae

VEHEMENTLY GRATEFUL

I am happy to be home.
I am happy to hold my babies.
I am happy to hold my lady.
I am happy for my working body. (But that DAMNED knee)

OH, the greatness of LIVINGDOM.

I am momentarily working on a new record, one that I NEED to make, for my babies, for myself, for the VASTLY unimportant desire to feel “important”.

Joshua Fred