Last year I bought my mom a gift certificate to repat.com for her to turn some favorite t-shirts into a giant quilt. It turned out great and as a Christmas present to myself I ordered one using some of my old running shirts. I just got it back in the mail this past weekend.
There’s a lot of miles and a lot of memories that went into that quilt. I thought it might be fun to use it as a means for posting about some past races and thoughts and so I’m laying the groundwork for the stray, random day flashbacks to races long finished. Here’s the “Battleship” style grid layout of the tapestry so we can follow along and see what shirt I’m writing about and when.
This way I can randomly jump around for a race memory without having to go in any set order. To get things started, I’ll link to my LA Marathon Run Down Memory Lane post as it relates to block E3 — The 2005 LA Marathon. There’s no timetable or scheduled release date for the postings; I’m just going to write one here and there, as when the mood strikes me.
Part of my rationale for laying this quilt out as a long-term project for postings stems from a memory flash as I looked at the finished product.
Firstly, I couldn’t get Harrison Ford’s faux-Scottish brogue from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) out of my head,
Butler: [Answering door] Yes?
Indiana Jones: [In Scottish accent] Not before time! did you intend to leave us standing on the doorstep all day? we’re drenched
[sneezes in butler’s face]
Indiana Jones: Now look, I’ve gone and caught a sniffle
Butler: Are you expected?
Indiana Jones: Don’t take that tone with me my good man! Now buttle off and tell Baron Brunwald that Lord Clarence McDonald and his lovely assistant
[Drags Elsa towards him]
Indiana Jones: are here to view the tapestries
Butler: Tapestries?
Indiana Jones: The old man is dense, this is a castle isn’t it? there are tapestries
Butler: This is a castle and we have many tapestries, and if you are a Scottish lord then I am Mickey Mouse!
Indiana Jones: How dare he?
[punches butler in face]
On top of that, somewhere I read that 23 years ago this week the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Tapestry” aired. In it, the mischievous Q plays Clarence to show stalwart Jean-Luc Picard that It’s a Wonderful Life. He provides Picard with an opportunity to change a perceived mistake in his Starfleet Academy days, only to see the time ripples impact the Enterprise’s captain in major ways. Picard has a lovely summation of the lesson learned:
“There are many parts of my youth that I’m not proud of… there were loose threads… untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads… it unraveled the tapestry of my life.”
– Picard to Riker in Ronald D. Moore’s “Tapestry” script, Season 6, Episode 15, first aired February 13, 1993
We are the greater sum parts of what came before. Every experience, good or bad, makes us who we are today. And so revisiting these races and memories are a good reminder of things I’ve done and provide hopefully signposts for what I am doing and what I aspire to do in the future.
So let’s begin, not tugging on the strands of the past, but appreciating what came before.