Why I Ran

This past autumn, I did a lot of running. I was not a "runner," I was a relatively athletic human training for a marathon, so my determination and enthusiasm were fuelled mostly by fear. Throughout the training, I learned the things that runners care and talk about: hydrating, carb loading, and bowel movements. I experienced runner's high. Then I chased runner's high. Midway through the training program, I began having creative flashes when running solo, and enjoyed short streams of words flowing through my mind, if only a few words at a time somedays. These moments of wordplay made me feel artful and alive. Running was strenuous, and sometimes filled with pain and doubt, but it was joyful.

Running was also social. I joined a running club in the summer of 2011 to distract myself from months of lonely grad school work. Running practice provided the perfect foil for exam readings, and I built my meals and exam goals around my practice schedule. I saw the same group of people up to five times a week. We knew more about each other than did our families and close friends. Hours running elbow to elbow make that unavoidable.

In many training clubs, the longest run of the week is on Sunday morning. After long Sunday morning runs, our group refuelled and debriefed over mounds of eggs and much coffee at the local brunch pub. We were each in different careers and stages of life, but had the running-club personality in common (some more than others). I started as a fly on the wall when it came to running speak. Two seasons later, I knew enough of my own muscle spasms and post-speed-work upset stomach to wax stretching and energy-gel strategy with the fastest of them.

When weeks crept toward the November 2012 Philadelphia Marathon, running became synonymous with breathing. I only took Mondays off, and that day was spent doing a yoga class or stretching on ice packs. Motivated by performance anxiety, I easily declined social activities that would interfere with running, even if it were only the next day's run, or the long run the day after that. I didn't feel the loss of my non-runner friends. I loved arriving at practice well fuelled and rested and ready to go. I was a runner.

The alarm on my BlackBerry didn't exactly replace my friends, but it kind of became my buddy. Early alarm, grumpy morning stomach, splash of water on face and down throat, 12 kilometers along the mothy river at the humid Ottawa sunrise, writing, eating, eating, eating and still mid-afternoon starvation, and early evening brain crash became the routine, and the uniqueness of going through a day on that rhythm was more thrilling than anything. The endorphins didn't hurt either. I grinned ear-to-ear for two straight months.

On one of the last speed training evenings before our tapering regimen, a brisk October Wednesday, my friends Hillary, Randy, Mel, and I jogged from our run club to the gravel track of a local high school. Nights were coming earlier, and the track was unlit. 

After the first fast mile (which came to 4.5 laps of this slightly undersized track), we each peeled an outer layer. In tank tops and shorts, our thighs and arms (deeply tanned from a summer of training in oppressive Ontario heat) glistened with sweat under the moonlight. We were nervous for the laps ahead. We jittered, shook our limbs, spoke excitedly, shared words of encouragement, joked about eating too recently. Randy exclaimed, "This is for Philly." I mumbled 'Philly' to myself as we took to the start line for the next sprint.

The second mile went quickly and I looked forward to the third. I was warm and powerful. By the end of the third, I could feel lactic acid collecting in my quads and my bottom half started to get heavy. In the fourth mile, which was our fastest, my legs wobbled, my lungs prickled, I felt on the verge of tripping, and I had to deny to my brain that there was more to go in order to get it to tell my legs and arms to round that final turn. Come on, body. Do your thing.

In the 5th mile sprint, the last sprint I would do before Philadelphia because I was about to acquire an injury, my brain was alight with motivational vocabulary. As wordy as my brain became on long runs through the Gatineau hills, that particular city night, it was full of adjectives and metaphor. I ran in step with Hillary. As we wound around one end of the track midway through the mile, pushing out air and sucking it back in, I imagined we were precariously attached to each other by a suspended wire, connecting each of our hearts by the cool gelly pads of an electrotherapy machine. If one of us were to change pace, the pads would slip off, leaving us each to suffer the end of the run alone. Without the heart of the other. I imagined the coolness of the gel pads gently vibrating to soothe my beating heart.

My narration went on like that for a few more seconds and I imagined sputtering out to Hillary my thoughtful heart-attacher story. I imagined that the only thing to say in response to something so ridiculous (or in response to any comment made in those excruciating moments, for that matter) was "fuck," so I didn't say anything and kept on sprinting to the end. We crossed that final finish line, everyone high-fived, and after dumping back some powdery water and sliding the top layers back on, we slowly jogged to our respective homes.

Months later, I sit in my physiotherapist's office with a jammed pelvis. I can't run or jump or bike and I miss the folks who are taking laps of the track and piles of post-30k scrambled eggs without me. Since I've been so injured, many people have chuckled at me that, "See? Marathons hurt people! We, as humans, are not meant to run that far!" But I wouldn't trade crossing that Philadelphia finish line with Hillary and Mel and Randy for the world.

can't go home again

Stepping out of the airport cab in Oakland last week, my brow relaxed, I felt relief and anticipation. I didn't grow up in California, but in many ways, it feels more like home than Vancouver. The climate is moderate and sunny, and vegans eat well. Without any example of how this is the case, I feel more accepted. Adding nostalgia to the picture, clouds roll into the Bay area like they did in my pacific northwest childhood.

I was in town with a few colleagues, who happen to be close friends, for a national conference. We all needed the time away, and California would be just the thing. Like most conferences, this one hosted much hollow theorizing, but one panel, featuring superstars Chandra Mohanty and Linda Carty, installed enough inspiration to support the rest of my academic year. Their take-home was "know yourself and be principled." How simple.

I bonded with my friends over hip hop beats and vegan soul food the rest of the weekend. Now my heart is happy at a cafe in SF as I plan my escape from cold, old Ottawa to some pleasant city along this coast. bell hooks writes on home as a sense of belonging. You can move away from your roots and plant new roots through genuine involvement with a community. This late morning, I plan to head down to the Pier and smile at people. Gotta start somewhere.

flight delayed

At the revolving doors of YOW, I lumbered out of the taxi with uncharacteristic despondency. I don't remember self-tagging my luggage. My pace didn't quicken when I noticed the passengers behind me in the security line twitch with impatience as I fished for electronics and liquids in my large and disorganized duffle.


I fly enough now to chalk the airport process up to a huge nuisance. I cringe at the class privilege of that statement. My eyes no longer dart from cover to cover of bestsellers and glossy magazines on the stands of Relay or Hudson News. I no longer make the traditional purchases of fashion magazines and specialty coffees, because I value the time at the gate and in the air for tedious reading and writing that seems to move more smoothly when I don't have mobile access. I go straight to my gate, plug in, zone out. In fact, I've nearly missed several flights in this state of mind.


At the final call to board (why wait in line with the masses?), I saunter over to the gate/porte - my portal to friends and family on the other side of this vast Canadian land. I anticipate dinner and wine, but I look forward to the interim: to unfastening the tray table, to positioning my laptop on a diagonal to make space for the square napkin hosting a plastic cup of orange juice, to wrapping my neck and lower face in a cotton scarf, and to typing without interruption. 


Giorgio Agamben writes on the camp as 'state of exception', where lawlessness is the state of law. This airport, like every one, might be as close as I get to sensing his zone of indistinction. At the airport, the building's windows are closed. Inside, the rules are nonnegotiable, attendants decide your fate if you make expensive mistakes, and a sense of law and lawlessness - represented by milling clusters of diverse citizenships clutching passports and white tickets - provides pressure and pace to the arid climate.


Today my flight got delayed. I was relieved, because I got more time to charge my laptop (outlets on plane seatbacks are notorious for not working, and on a 6 hour flight, this matters) and write this post.

in brief: a night terror

Last night I dreamt that Stephen Harper and I were hanging out on a lunch break in the CBC cafeteria on Queen Street. He was wearing an ill-fitting peach dress shirt, no tie. I was wearing denim cutoffs. I made a joke about my politics being a little... lefter... than his, and he smiled knowingly and nodded to a set of audio-recorders embedded in my left arm. He'd been listening to my subversive drivel for years. He said something along the lines of, "I know your politics. And they don't make a difference. Because I'm in charge. We should go out on a date sometime."

A) I need to stop running by the Right Honourable's house on my Wednesday tempo training sessions.

B) I need a break from reading the news and political science.

C) I think I have trust issues.

D) I'm ready to go home to B.C. now.

Stephen Harper’s House Party

It's the Canada Day weekend and the underage boys slouched outside my local liquor store can hardly contain themselves.

I find it impossible to enjoy the way we celebrate this national holiday. My strong dislike of Canada Day celebrations is not mere venom toward intoxicated teenagers. On July 1, Ottawa enters a strangely exceptional state of debauchery and consumption in the name of worshipping our nation. Let’s pause for a moment: didn’t most of us spend the better part of last year recoiling from the actions of the government of the day? At the very least, our sudden turn to state exaltation is silly. At most, it begs all kinds of ethical and political questions.

It’s socially unacceptable to speak out against national pride, and difficult to get a critical piece published at this time of year. Collectively, we don’t appreciate critiques of our “homeland.” To dishonour the nation, it seems, is to insult its citizens. But what’s lost in this defensive posture is how a criticism of Canada Day celebrations is not necessarily a rant against the land or its inhabitants. Instead, it might be read as strongly dedicated to this land, in the hope of making it more sustainable and just.

This year, I'm piqued less by how the evidence of rowdiness (vomit, broken glass, scraps of clothing) will litter my downtown community on the morning of 2 July, and more by how we are encouraged to consume this holiday. What comes before the neighbourhood malaise and what is its function? What does blind patriotism negate?

There were three flyers in my mailbox on Friday morning, all intending to capitalize on the holiday craze. The corner pizza shop is offering a special Canadian pizza (topped with bacon, not a sliced Canadian passport). The local chain grocer is offering sales on Coke, beef tenderloin steak, smoked sausage, and hotdog buns: evidence that this is a weekend to celebrate with consumption of animals, not a weekend for vegetables. A major hotel in the city is offering “Canada Day rooms” at reduced rates (picture: stuffed beaver and miniature canoe decor).

Symbols of Canadian pride are ubiquitous in the lead-up to this weekend. On a recent trip to Toronto, I emerged from the subway to an advertisement by Ottawa tourism, urging Torontonians to come party on the Hill once the boring bureaucrats go home! On Facebook, profiles are being changed to invoke a weekend of boozing and sunburn. Even my running group, a typically quirky gang, is planning to wear red and white on a Sunday morning jaunt.

These practices aren’t inherently problematic in themselves, but they are strange in the context of what I perceive to be an atmosphere of rising dissent in Canadian culture. For over a year now, my social media pages and pub conversations have hosted a laundry list of the terrible things Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are doing to the integrity of our country and the mobility of our citizenry. The passing of the Budget Bill C38 not two weeks ago, that effectively gutted 30 years of progression in environmental law, is fresh in our hearts. Lest we forget, Harper has muzzled government scientists, reduced protections on fish habitats, eliminated the long-gun registry, and officially withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol. He has called us names and excluded us from events and doesn't return our phone calls. Call me old fashioned, but when I don’t like someone, I’m not inclined to go to their house party.

It is clear that a significant bunch of us like to exercise our vocabulary of negative adjectives in describing this government’s behaviour: despicable, reprehensible, contemptible. But what are we doing about it? If we truly love our country, and hope for its future, might not July 1 be an ideal moment to gather in collective resistance against a government that repeatedly shows disrespect for our democracy? If there exists such widespread discontent with Ottawa today, isn’t Canada Day on Parliament Hill precisely the time and place to act on it?

This Sunday, Wellington Street will be packed with folks from miles around, wearing face paint, buying street meat, and not-so-fashionably displaying red bra straps under white tank tops (I digress...). As some of us comply with the recent federal splurge on 1812 commemoration by happily donning our flag socks, packing the cooler, and guiding the stroller onto the lawn of Parliament Hill, let us pause for moral reflection on this party. What are we doing at this party? What public work might be done here instead if the thousands of us waved signs for a better Canada, and a better world?

This weekend, may we open the dialogue to resist blind celebration, and urge our government to make Canada more enjoyable for more people, all year round.

Mommy wars, are we mom enough, sex museums in Ottawa, and intensive misogyny

From my position in bed with a head cold from heck (Montreal), it seems Ottawa news media is hyper-sexed this week. Every time I stretch across the pillow pile for Kleenex and my connection to the outside world (Blackberry with Twitterfeed), it's the sex museum (or something), James Moore on sex (gross!), or reactions to Time on moms' boobs, which, let's face it, relate, albeit peripherally and certainly controversially, to sex (which you can learn about at the sex museum).

I chose to be driven crazy by Time (which, for the record, is a terrible magazine...bought my first and last copy this week) because it had the balls (gross!) to ask "Are you mom enough?" to a group of the most guilty humans on the planet. The audacity! I'm not even a mom and it makes me grumble.

Working moms (who are women) are getting shit on this year. Questioning economic inequity gets construed as an insult to "housewifery," and triggers a US presidential candidate to hop on a soapbox to defend the choice to stay home and bake (I joke). If you talk about mothers experiencing stress at work, tongue-clucking ensues. "Why'd you go and find a career, you bad life chooser?"

In my comprehensive exam reading, I wrestled with the idea of whether or not the "Mommy wars" (which are likened to a giant cat fight, which really makes me want to scratch someone's eyeballs out and lick myself) are a real raging thing (oh god, the militarism... today someone called for a "cease-fire"). Sociologists are divided on if working moms envy stay-at-home moms, and vice versa, or if this battleground has been staked out by the media. Cover stories like "Are you mom enough?" and the explosion of polarized responses from all over the political spectrum suggest, at least, that both are happening. Moms are stressed out by their constrained choices, and the media has a field day fanning the flames. And making sexist metaphors out of them.

This mom war, superficial or not, tells us a lot about the cultural climate these days. Basically we hate women as much as ever, especially when they have control over stuff (other than baking, 'cause who doesn't like fresh bread? and it takes so long!), so it's best to keep them busy with childbearing (which, by the way, I consider a full-time job). But beyond a gender analysis, we need to move to a feminist analysis of what else is being represented by soldiers of the mommy wars. A couple of days ago, I did a mini-class analysis of this swing toward "intensive mothering" for the Citizen, but there remains a lot to say about whiteness, thinness, sexuality, colonialism, and celebrity. What would we be saying about an image of a black woman who went on social assistance to breastfeed for four years? I'll die before "Floridian welfare moms do it right" makes the cover of Time.

writer's block is writers lying

This past week, I did a lot of research, but I couldn't bring myself to add pages to my latest paper. It caused major stress. I was reminded of why I am afraid of career writing. The stress got worse. I felt dumb for being stressed. The stress got even...worse. And so, cookie dough on spoon, third coffee on nightstand, I looked up the origins of writer's block.

Fittingly(?), "writer's block" is one of the least informative wikipedia pages I have read. Upon further digging, my general understanding of what is and what causes writer's block was confirmed. Coined by a psychoanalyst in the 40s, it is an issue of feeling uncreative, anxious, or unskilled, for any number of reasons, including no reason at all, that causes writing to stop.

Days later, I agree with applying causation to anxiety, and, at least in my case, the anxiety is related to trying to write something I don't believe or know (or think I know). Never has the writing gone slowly if the thoughts are confident and true. Just this week, I was struggling through a project proposal when I realized I was proposing a project I didn't think was useful. This idea was affirmed on Friday when I was having water with a girlfriend and heard myself struggle to discuss a personal topic. Eventually I blurted out a shocking phrase. I acknowledged its ring of truth only upon hearing it escape my mouth, and then the words poured out.

I'm now noticing how prevalent is this communication block in personal life. Relationships only cause me stress if I'm lying. Only if I'm lying (usually to myself) is it difficult to find the words to say, or does anxiety feel like torment. This week, when I made serious eye contact with a friend and allowed the truth to be exchanged between us, I first understood the issue at hand. Upon figuring out the core of my message, the words (and tears) fell.

I've decided writer's block isn't a thing. Self-deception is a thing. It is difficult to write when judging or deceiving myself, and it's impossible to write when judging myself for judging or deceiving. I had this belief reflected back at me this week when on a run with my friend, Randy. We talked about Sheryl Sandberg's talk on how women get in their own way, and as much as I'd like to add a hefty dose of materialism to Sandberg's "numbers tell the story" approach, the practice of women's negative self-talk is surely contributing to writing slowing to a halt.

Now that the block is sorted, it's BACK TO THE PAPER, reciting affirmations to tell it like it is, sans dough.