RUN!

The other day I signed up for the Rock the Parkway race, scheduled for April 2nd in Kansas City. There is a 5K, 10K, and half-marathon course, and I opted for the 10K. I haven’t reached the point in my life when I believe running 13 miles is a necessity. I’ll stick with 6 for now.

This scenic route takes you down Ward Parkway, a relatively flat course with plenty of visual stimulation to distract you while you are pushing through the last couple of miles. Several friends have signed up to do it as well and I’m looking forward to the early morning run with buddies. You can sign up on their website up until race day. Although as of tomorrow the prices jump up a bit. Proceeds will go toward Science City at Union Station to help fund a weekend of health taking place on April 9th and 10th. This event will expose children and adults to healthy lifestyles and ways everyone can make changes to be active, eat right, and generally treat our bodies well!

While “training” might be a little too intense for what I’m actually doing, these past few weeks I’ve been upping my mileage in order to prepare for the race. I know I’ve mentioned these dudes before, but Ratatat is the best music for running. Their upbeat tunes keep me going, and surprisingly the lyric-free songs prevent me from getting distracted (sometimes I have a tendency to want to sing along). This song is one of my current favorites (they change weekly, more or less). At about 1:15 and 3:10 into the song I can’t help but want to break into a sprint. Either that or jump off the treadmill and bust a move. Either way it’s a win-win situation.

Wally

This afternoon I wrapped up Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. I experienced a lot of impatience as I was flipping through the last couple of pages; I just wanted the book to be over. This is perhaps one of my least favorite emotions involved with reading. I very rarely choose to not finish a book, despite how annoying I find it. I suppose it’s my need for closure. I don’t want a whole bunch of ‘unfinished business’ out there.

Anyway, I was ready for the book to end. Not because it was a bad book or that I didn’t like it. In fact, neither are true. I guess I just felt frustrated with some

Photo Courtesy of mediabistro.com

parts of the book and was ready for the sense of accomplishment I had been without for the entirety of the paperback.

Brief Interviews is a compilation of essays that…see even here I can’t pinpoint exactly what they all had in common. If I were to go solely by the title I would generalize the motif by concluding the book is about inadequacies of men and their nature toward the perverse, hurtful, shameful, neglectful, or foul. By saying that, however, I would be sorely misrepresenting the book. I know it is about more than that, but I am having trouble gathering my thoughts.

One essay, titled “The Depressed Person,” relates the tale of a woman (see, not even a man!) who is fiercely depressed. She drags down everyone in her Support System and interrupts their lives to try to analyze her own. She even seems to think she drove her therapist to suicide. And after the therapists untimely death, can’t help but wonder if the woman (the therapist) even liked her. Another essay “Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko” is a weird modern-day Greek parable, whose message completely eluded me. Halfway through I gave up and went to the next essay when I realized I had absolutely no clue what was happening and no desire to try to work it out.

To be fair, there were essays  I liked. Despite the underlying sadness, and slight bizarreness of “Adult World (I)” and “(II),” I thought these stories presented an intimate look at what marriage can look like when you’ve settled in and gotten over the newness of it all. It didn’t hurt that these two were more reader-friendly and included notes by the author to help guide the reader along.

Though I was happy to finish the book I’m glad I read it. It’s a completely different idea of what fiction is and what it can do. I’ve read a non-fiction piece by Wallace as well, Consider the Lobster. While this book had it’s tough moments (he does a comparison piece on dictionaries), I thought it was more accessible than Brief Interviews. What I’m really excited for is the hunk I picked up today at the bookstore, Infinite Jest. According to the literary world, this book brought fiction to a new level and defied what it meant to be a contemporary fiction author. It is unlike anything ever before, and all that have tried to simulate its genius are sorry excuses for the original.

This 1,000+ page novel is not to be devoured. I won’t speed through it like I do so many other books. I’m giving myself one month to tackle it. I’m embracing and looking forward to the challenge. Plus, I’m going to need something to fill up my time in February…