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SubscriptionsSites I Read
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| I'm still making myself Bicycle Crazy over at the Everyday Athlete Blog, but every-so-often I miss writing about eggplants and trains and sunglasses and mimosas.
I've always been a big fan of range. [As in, have a little range, wouldja?]
I need something a little more than the Xanga aesthetic can offer me at this point, but I came back here to remember why I started blogging in the first place - why it was fun and what it meant.
If you care to find me writing more TooOldForThis-esque lifey type stuff, I've set up camp over at HeidiSwift.com.
No more anonymity. Just heirloom tomatoes and bees in the basil...
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| Black coffee and toast.
The floral tablecloth is covered in clear plastic. Sal's family is moving around me.
The toast will be unwelcome cargo in 25 minutes, but my gut is singing songs to me and I have to wait for my iPhone to load up new music.
I've cut my hair again. The sun is shining. Across the street, the firemen are cleaning their shiny red trucks. Sprinklers are making green lawns greener and old ladies are bent over flower gardens, preparing to wave at me just as soon as I appear around the corner.
The suburbs are loaded with mediocrity, simplicity and the slow progress of daily lives turning over and over again. They're waiting for me.
White earbuds into small ears. Music. Sidewalk. Sun.
I've forgotten my technical sunglasses, so I wear the massive Gucci's that we bought in Playa de la Carmen years ago. They slip down on my nose when the sweat comes. The San Jose heat penetrates me.
This is my loop. A 2.2 mile lap that I created one day in 2003 by driving the car around the neighborhood. There were days in that year that I ran this loop 5 times in a row.
I can still run the route on autopilot - completely without thought. I know every ridge in the sidewalk, every uneven bit of surface. Boring? Maybe. Therapeutic? Absolutely.
It's a trance.
I run without anger or aggression. Without worry. Without anxiety or doubt.
Mason Jennings sings "Moon Sailing on the Water" and I have to force myself not to sing along. My side hurts. The toast is making itself known.
I find a place just on the periphery of the pain and hunker down. I imagine that the discomfort is a teacher so I make myself open to lessons. I am struck by the beauty of my purpose here: to put my feet in front of one another, to keep moving forward.
In every other moment of my life, the input is on rapid fire. Demands from all sides. Opportunities, requirements, responsibilities, choices, impositions, requests, decisions, dilemmas.
Today there is only this toast in my gut and this concrete under my feet - and the simple task of moving my body forward across the surface of the earth.
I need to run. It's part of me.
When I'm done, I walk a cool down on Knollfield Way and lay down in the grass under a neighbor's tree to stretch. The toast is gone, satisfied.
My body is glowing and shiny. Hot from the inside out. Saturated with elation and calm.
*
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| I raced a mountain bike race yesterday. It was my first race on a mountain bike. I was nervous.
None of that matters as I point out in my full race report.
Hearts stop beating. Young men, younger than me, fall over in the middle of races. Everything and anything can and will always happen.
Sal shoots skyward in an airplane for work. He is in as much danger when he's far away as when he's by my side, but I feel more in control when he's here.
The image of violent chest compressions will not leave me anytime soon. In the mortality of that rider, I saw the fragility of everything.
I am still convinced that these moments make us human.
Not that they are the only ones. Not that I believe we are all inherently good and we will always come together in a crisis. Just that in these moments when everything happens so fast in slow motion, when the stakes are high... these make us.
During the tragedy of New Orleans, I mourned for the opposite reason. The seeming way we fell apart and unraveled in the face of disaster. The many reasons that we went to war with each other during that time. The nakedness of our lingering class and race issues so embarrassing and horrific.
If you ask me, we're neither inherently good or evil. We're inherently nothing.
We make choices every day and every hour. Every minute.
We should own those decisions.
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| Recently, I was lucky enough to meet William F. House in the flesh. He is one of the first people that I started reading in this community.
Sitting at the top of Flagstaff Road in Boulder, Colorado we could not help but reminisce about the way we met, the nature of our blogs (his now closed, mine open but neglected), and the other amazing people that we'd had the chance to meet here.
This was the first place that I allowed my myself to write freely. I learned to deal with criticism, flames, and praise. In some ways, my writing grew up in the mostly supportive atmosphere here.
I never really wanted to be a writer, but I was always keenly aware that it is probably what I should be doing. My mother suffered at the hands of one specific writing industry (the newspaper), so I was convinced that all writing paths must lead to such frustration and despair.
I wrote here because it seemed pure and untouchable. If you write for money - the writing process will necessarily be subject to impositions by those providing your income. Write for free, keep it pure, write for happiness.
This is great, but doesn't necessarily push the writing. The freedom of the blog is both a blessing and a curse.
Three months ago, an editor from The Oregonian contacted me at the Everyday Athlete blog to see if I would be interested in writing a cycling column for their soon-to-be-launched Outdoors section.
I panicked. I did my research on the paper. I called my mom. I relaxed. And then I accepted.
The second column hit my porch today in the early morning hours and I am still giddy about seeing my face above my byline and my photography front and center on the page. The enormity of this opportunity has only recently begun to hit me. Newspapers don't really pay, but exposure does.
As I begin to accept myself as a "real" writer, my capacity to produce is increasing exponentially. I want to write all the time. I want to lock myself in my tiny writing closet and never come out.
The whole process started here, with you (if you're still out there) as my motivation and inspiration. I wrote because I knew you were reading and because I truly believed that the stuff of our lives was important enough to share.
I still believe all that, whether I am writing about Sally making tapas on a Sunday at the loft, or about a meaningful mountain biking trip with a friend.
If you're interested in checking out the column, the online version is actually pretty good.
But in the meantime, thanks again. For everything. Really.
xo
Heidi
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| I love to watch Sal unwind. I love to watch him with his family.
He has the next two weeks off and we'll be here in the home where he spent most of his childhood for the next three days.
I have lived here, too. These walls, in some way, are also mine.
I know how to set the table and which glass container holds pecorino instead of parmesan. I pull shots from the espresso machine for americanos, instead of drinking drip. We sleep on an old mattress, in a tiny room that used to be ours.
Back then I put a drawing of a thermometer on the wall and filled it in with red marker, as we saved the down payment to buy the loft.
I commuted 5 hours a day by train and bus.
I gained a sister here, and a father and mother. I was accepted into the family during those years. We forged together and laughed over fresh pasta, pressed in the patio. We ate canoli while Angelo sang old Sicilian folk songs at the end of meals.
We still do those things.
These aren't the holidays I knew as a child, but they're important and poignant in their own way.
Merry Christmas.
xo
Heidi
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