I wasn’t thrilled with yesterday’s post. I think the point I was trying to convey with regards to running is that I sometimes have certain expectations and experiences that should make a run go one way or the other… but very often it can go completely opposite to what I thought was going to be the case. I’ve felt horrible before a run and kicked it up a notch on the road and I’ve felt really good and ready to go only to get a few steps into a run and it’s like slogging through molasses in Boston in 1919.
I had a grand vision for what I was hoping to say and I never felt like I even got close to what was in my head for it. That’s always my big worry – how well do things live up to what’s in my head in the real world.
We bought last minute tickets for Vanessa last night at the Santa Fe Opera. Intriguingly, during the Prelude Talk with an Opera Expert, we found out it was composed by a guy born in West Chester, PA, a stone’s throw from where we grew up.
All in all, the staging was quite impressive. While I found the unrequited love and gothic suffering dark beyond all, it was still fun. Though seemingly out of the place, the two characters beats of levity were much needed in the opening second act. One involved a footman’s obsession with women’s fur coats and then the doctor to the lead family had a delightful drunk scene. Any bit of comedy was welcomed, even if it did seem incredibly out of tune with the darkness of the narrative. The doctor was actually the most tragic figure in the piece as his unrequited love for the title character was for me the most believable and therefore saddest component of the turgid soap opera. It’s a bleak piece but because I didn’t completely buy the narrative throughline and arcs, it only partially fed my own weirdly reflective and melancholic mood.
On the plus side, it was great being out and about with Steve and sharing something he clearly loves. I’m enjoying the shows but much more enjoying spending some time with my big brother.
He got an early start this morning to go and finish up some writing from the other day. Lollygagging in bed and still feeling a bit sore and stiff if not from the mileage of racing then perhaps from the mileage in the car… or perhaps just the mileage of life… I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to go for a run. But as he gathered his stuff to head to the coffee shop, I felt like it was a sign I should rally and get out the door. If Vanessa and later her niece sat pining for a cad man in their respective lives, I certainly didn’t want to be lying around waiting. The catharsis of the opera may have been, “Well, at least I’m not THEM….” And thus to ensure I wasn’t THEM, I needed to rise up and get the day going.
I decided to run the same route as the previous day, even going so far as to take the “wrong” turn on the way back. This time I remembered to bring my phone so snapped a few photos along the way. Santa Fe is really a pretty place, even amidst construction and red lights and whatnot.
I tried to focus on the photos and not on the mileage… or so I told myself. It was the third day in a row of slow going pace… and I can’t in good conscience say it’s because I was stopping to smell the proverbial cacti.
My ankle is still tender and the top of my left foot remains… sore? You know how sometimes you go to seek medical assistance and they ask you to describe the pain, be it on a number scale or using adjectives, or I don’t know drawing where it hurts on a Pictionary pad. Or know you go to the mechanic about a rattle in your car and he or she asks you to imitate the sound or to make the car do the thing that’s bugging you? I’m 99% sure that’s just to entertain the professional because weird sub-par Michael Winslow style sound effects coupled with the inherent need for humankind to physically act out a rattle or hum in the human form or vehicle in question must be hilariously awkward and amusing to somebody who knows what they’re doing. I can’t really find the words to describe the top of my left foot – the closest being the phrasing I used a few days back that it feels like a bowling ball got dropped on it. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had a bowling ball dropped on my foot… probably… but I know this is how I imagine it would feel if a bowling ball fell on my foot. Would that be the same for other people? Would they imagine a bowling ball on the foot as a level 3 of pain or a level 5?
In any case, I’m tempted to cut back a bit on the miles but I’ve been enjoying such tasty food here in the Southwest that I hesitate to go cold turkey on the exercise… doing so leads I suspect to a ballooning belly and a darker outlook. I do not have a race this weekend so it’s just low mileage out and about runs for now and that seems okay. Besides, it’s no worse having run than not having run. This is something I keep coming back to and is probably the sort of thinking that again professionals shake their heads in incredulous dismay. If it doesn’t seem to be making things worse, why not keep doing it I think? A medical professional will say, “Because eventually it might make it much, much worse and the recovery might be much, much longer.” A mechanic might say, ‘Because eventually it might make it much, much worse and your car could explode.” Potato, potatoe.
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And because this is a clip show post, rambling and temporally all over the space, here are some shots from along the road (trip)that may or may not have made it into prior posts (or into the incoherent mess that the above paragraphs seem to be):
All the kids come running down
To see the greatest train in town
Come and ride the red caboose
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Steve and I have been snapping photos of our food as we go… and sometimes snapping photos of each other snapping photos of food. How very meta of us.
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Kudos to Santa Fe for honoring the past while highlighting that it has many, many horrors as well.
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I was fascinated by the quotation marks around “oldest” on this plaque. Is it in dispute? Is it a recreation rather than the actual “oldest house?” Though admission was free we felt like you had to go through a gift shop BEFORE you got any information and thus snide ill-informed commentary from me is all that remains.
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Tailgating, Santa Fe Opera style. This shot, taken as we strolled to the box office, features a woman shooting me a real stink eye!
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Today’s meal which was a polenta raved about in foodie blogs and on Yelp. I was a bit underwhelmed. Maybe it’s that expectations and baggage thing I wrote about yesterday.
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Meow Wolf in Santa Fe is described by their website as:
…an arts production company that creates immersive, multimedia experiences that transport audiences of all ages into fantastic realms of storytelling. Our work is a combination of jungle gym, haunted house, children’s museum, and immersive art exhibit. This unique fusion of art and entertainment gives audiences fictional worlds to explore.
The Meow Wolf Art Complex offers their first permanent installation, House of Eternal Return. It’s kinda like House of Leaves, Live! or a real-world interactive video game. The parking lot features huge artworks including a giant spider, a wolf dog that presumably meows, and a giant dandelion sniffing robot.
Inside the 20,000 square feet building, visitors enter into the Victorian home of the Selig family and encounter “an imaginative multiverse of unexpected environments.” It’s like a living game of exploration replete with artwork and a non-linear narrative wherein we are trying to solve the mystery or understand what’s happening or something. I’m not entirely sure. It was fun but I don’t quite know what we were supposed to do per se. There was quite a crowd inside and so we couldn’t read all the newspapers or access all the data files on the computers. It’s a lot to absorb and take in and it’s the first “museum” in quite some time that the annual pass might make sense. I don’t know when I’ll be back through Santa Fe, but with a little homework and preparation, I’d be willing to try and suss out what’s the haps there. As it was, Steve and I had fun wandering and exploring and just kinda letting the experience wash over us.
Sometimes you just roll with it and see what’s around the next corner, curve, hill, moment.