Two Birds

The truth of the matter is that blue water sailing is boring as all hell. Where do you think the saying comes from: “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” It’s a desert. Hollywood may do a good job selling the romance of open ocean, but this only lasts a day or so. I suppose that blue water stuff is only bested in matters of boredom by the grey water, sailing the North Atlantic. I’ve never been, but that has to be one dreary situation. And yet:

“Haul on the bowline, Sarah lives in Liverpool.”

This isn’t to complain too much. I love the mountains and the sea, but that doesn’t mean that Mama Earth isn’t without her wrinkles. The leaving of port is great. Full of promise and dopamine from goodbyes. Adventure. The spray of water on face and the drying of salt in hair. Sun on skin and a view full of approaching horizon. What’s beyond it? Who knows? That’s the great part.

Then the doldrums hit. That fantastic piece of boredom that really puts most of human history in perspective for you. The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of this is horrifically easy. It’s just the funny names and foreign pieces of equipment that intimidate the newcomer. Is the GPS good to go? We’re fine. You know what they did for sunscreen back in the golden days of corsairs, buccaneers, and privateers? Nothing. They just laughed at the new guy until his feet and hands blistered into leather. Germ theory was an urban legend, and they barely understood that ingesting vitamin C might just keep your skin from rotting off.

“She’s luffing” is just old-timey speak for “if it looks messed up it probably is”. This shit isn’t exactly rocket surgery. What you’ve got to remember is that guys crossed oceans and then proceeded to rape and pillage entire cultures out of existence when they couldn’t write their own godforsaken names. Where do you think the term “make your mark” comes from?

“Shamrock and rose boys, shamrock, rose, and thistle too.”

But there is a beauty to the shriek of a gull and the billowing of a sail. That sound of crash and spray on the bow. Sleeping on a boat is like being rocked into slumber by the Mother Ocean that we all come from. She bore us, and still cares for us, even after we left her. We traded our gills to take to the trees. It’s wonderful. The very primordial ooze we all crawled out of whispering: “I know you can’t breathe me anymore, but know I still love you.”

Then there’s the arrival. The animals are back. The birds are calling. The fish are jumping. Other ships are passing to pull into port. The boys are getting rowdy. Let’s raise a little Cain.

“Haul on the bowline, Katie lives in Sydney.”

One day you will come home, and her clothes will be gone.

There will be an envelope on the fridge. There will be a heart on it, but you will fear what it will do to your own.

“I love you so much….”

Apparently not enough.

You will look through drawers, not looking for signs of any thievery, not in any literal sense, just pieces of heart absconded with. Her top drawer will be empty. It was once full of the little letters and poems you would leave for her around the house:

“I’m walking down to get eggs. Back in 30. I will miss you like the flower misses the sun. Please don’t leave the bed”.

Je Ne T’oublierai

“It was terrible, I walked all around, but you weren’t there. It was the worst. They should really work on stocking you down’ere. I looked and I looked and I looked. It was horrible… but it’s OK now”.

It wasn’t at first site, at least not for you, but you’ve never worked like that. Pretty is priced at a dime a dozen. Beauty has levels, a depth that grows more enchanting the farther down you discover it goes. 

The talking. It’s always been the talking with you, and it probably always will be. Both the playful, gentle words on a Sunday afternoon along with the long, slow conversations about hopes, fears, dreams, and regrets. Every sentence is just another way to say “This is a piece of my heart. Please be careful with it. It’s very important to me… but I want you to have it.“

She will have taken the pictures of you together. Probably for the best. She was always smart like that. She will have left some mugs of her own that she knows you like, slivers of her. She will have left you all of the little sketches she would draw. That drawer will still be full.

You will wonder how we got from A to B. We were always romantic but never dramatic. Did she know she ran my show? Did she know that she never needed to tell me how high to jump? I just would have tried for the moon every time.

Part of you beats outside of yourself. You will (hopefully) wonder not with the idiocy of a sitcom father but with the genuine confusion, care, and worry that you did wrong by someone who owns a piece of you.

“Che Gane?” as the people of Central Asia would say. “What can you do?” Pick up the rubble. You will watch the balcony wind sweep through your prayer flags. Did I forget to plug them in? Maybe they’re not facing the right way. Could be getting a shitty signal. Is Mercury in retrograde?

Namaste – The divinity in me recognizes the divinity in you.

You will take a walk and review game tape. Was I strong enough? Was I sweet enough? Did I listen enough? Was I fun enough? We had fun, didn’t we? In every other restaurant or store, there will be wonderful memories.

I knew I shouldn’t have picked a Malbec. No, she likes a dry red.

I knew I shouldn’t have worn that tie. No, she loved that tie. She picked it out. She used to grab me by it.

What was I thinking? I knew I shouldn’t have sat on that side of the table. 

I knew we should have gotten a booth.

Did we go on enough trips?

You will look for answers where there are quite possibly none to be found.

You will live in a haunted house. You will see her staring at you from her spot on the couch. Her eyes bright and wild as any jungle cat but holding a soft smile, like she’s wondering how she somehow managed to put a collar on a jaguar. 

Her hand will still find a way to run down your back while a cup of coffee comes over your shoulder and a cheek meets the other side of your face. A set of fingers play with your torn up ears.

“How’s it end?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Once upon a time.

You will go to lunch with old friends. You loved how she’d light up when you moseyed on over, just happy as to how happy you could make her. Everyone used to smile the moment she’d leave the table, telling you they didn’t know you could relax like that. You’d turn into jello and soften the moment she came in. You’ve known for a long time that you need to be “reigned in”, like pulling an excited horse or dog’s head into your chest and whispering in its ear.

There will be no “fuck her”, no “you can do better”, no “I didn’t like her anyways”, because they saw you together, kicking in the front door like movie stars. Everyone will express a quiet sorrow, but not because you are sad. It just doesn’t feel right. A cosmic injustice. An affront to whatever gods may walk the stars.

Carry this with dignity. It’s not your first rodeo.

The happy dreams will be far more painful than the sad ones. Your heart. Your heart has always been loud. You’ve always been able to count on it to speak, but Old Faithful will have taken a shot. For the first time in a long time, that big thumpin’ grandfather clock in your chest will go silent. What do you do when your heart is quiet? Don’t worry. Clocks can be fixed. It just takes a bit.

“We heal stronger in the places that are broken” – Ernest Hemingway

You’ll walk the city and pass by familiar park benches. A little exposure therapy couldn’t hurt. It was here. It was right here. She was right here. She kissed my fingers and happy-cried. Always means always. “Je ne t’oublierai”. She kept the letters because she wants to read them. She wants to read them forever…

She said the same about you.

Fuck.

You will plan trips. Maybe it’s time to dust off the old tent and go camping. You will pick through your passport, pondering over various stamps. You will laugh when you catch yourself Googling the weather in Kyiv, wondering how the Ukrainian Foreign Legion is looking this time of year. You will still lift and run, hit the pads, and take to the ice. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll half-ass it for quite a while. That even makes it worse. There is no prescription for this. There will be no rage to exorcise. All the same:

“Better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener at war.”

You will have more than one dark night of the soul when you find hairs in your car, in the bed, in the kitchen, in the shower. They’re all too long to call your own. She was here.

I could call her sister. We’ve always gotten along well. We both think the other’s an absolute riot.

Just to make sure everything’s ok.

Stop.

Stop.

Sleep.

The grandfather clock is just in the shop for a bit.

Many years ago, there was a trail of covered wagons passing through prairie as far as the eye can see. Now it’s littered with fast food joints and truck stops, but there was a time before such things (believe it or not).

People and their animals would take turns walking alongside the wagons. Spare the horses. I’m sure more than one boy tried to imitate the swagger of the cowhands (who were probably faking it just as hard anyway). Big iron on the hip, a lip full of chaw, and not a single clue as to what he was about to witness.

These new arrivals will see things completely alien to them. The noble bison. The face of the American West. A mountain of muscle, but with a kind of serene grace to its movement. Gentle eyes with the capacity for an unstoppable level of ferocity. The perfect symbol for the land’s pristine beauty and rugged savagery.

The Comanche will be seen atop horses brought by the Spanish hundreds of years ago. The men will have flat noses and darkened, leathery faces from years in the saddle. They kill the bison, but with a gratefulness about it. The bison shelters their friends, feeds their children, and clothes them on a cold winter night. But the buffalo are dwindling and with it the Comanche. There are less and less every year. The Empire of the Summer Moon is waning.

The white wagons drifting across the prairie must have looked like sails over a glassy ocean. Hernan Cortes’ ships probably looked similar as they approached Aztec shores.

The settlers will venture on. Some will stop, content with where they’ve arrived or simply incapable of continuing. Some will watch that high grass slowly reveal a wall of earth. Up will rise the Rockies, bigger than any deity they could possibly conceive of. And beyond that? Red rock and high desert. And beyond that? A gentle rise until it gives way to glittering ocean down below.

By Sean Quinn

It’s game day, but the ten thousand won’t start until the stadium lights are on. You want to stay away from the track for as long as possible. There’s no sense in rattling yourself to pieces before the gun even goes off, and you don’t need some poor student trainer to rub your calves down.

You’ll sit in the backyard and listen to The Beach Boys, just trying to think of anything else. Eventually, the wait will be over. It’s time. You will pack your spikes and singlet as if they are sacred vestments because they are. You will drive to the track to save your legs.

“Sure, sure bud. You ran 80 miles this week, but that’s what’ll blow up the whole operation, walking to the track, sure.”

You’ll pass through the gate and say hi to the guys and the ladies all milling about, readying for their own events or dealing with the aftermath of them. Finally, the call for the ten thousand meters will be announced. One of the guys will ask you how you feel. You’ll gently but rapidly tap your chest to indicate the fluttering of your heart. He’ll nod because you all know that feeling.

“It just means you care, man.”

You’ll silently clasp his shoulder as you pass by, thanking him for the sendoff. Years later you will still hear these words any time your heart starts to flutter like that.

You will find a spot in your assigned lane, surrounded by a menagerie of exotic animals. There will be the gazelles, the Kenyan types: calves like little stones tucked in just below their knees. The greyhounds will be much shorter but perhaps a little thicker than the gazelles: carbon fiber racing frames with a tuned-up, turbo-boosted V-12 under the hood. Between these two is the mustang: moderate in just about every attribute except for the ability to just keep trucking. You’ll always like to think that you were of this variety. Like a wild mustang leading the herd on untamed, Wyoming plains.

The official will approach the line, his starter pistol might as well be an executioner’s axe. They should just complete the look and get these guys black hoods. You’ll take a few deep breaths before you assume the position, until that gun finally cracks against the inky, black stillness of a Tallahassee sky.

And so begins the slow descent into madness. The first few miles are spent just trying to stay calm and hope that some jackass doesn’t go out in a 68. On the very first lap, you can hear the crowd scream, but that quickly fades away into the blur of pounding feet and controlled breathing. You shouldn’t be listening to them anyway. You have to slow your mind. By the end of the second mile, everyone has settled into the pack and you can read their respective body language like a book.

As you swing into the third mile the first twangs of discomfort begin to set in. Not pain, not yet, but discomfort. The crowd noise is still a mushy fog in your ears compared to what is going on in your brain. In an effort to just go somewhere else, you will start conjugating verbs in Spanish, go through multiplication tables, and recite lyrics that hold no special place in your heart.

The pack will finish the third mile and a horrible realization will start to creep in:

“We’re only halfway through.”

About 800m through the fourth mile, the darkness will set in.

“What the fuck am I doing here? This sport is so stupid: there’s no ball, no points. We’re just running in circles. I shoulda wrestled for the Naval Academy. At least I’d be jacked. I could just stop. I could just stop, right now. This isn’t boxing. Nobody’s gonna tune me up if I put my hands down. This isn’t hockey. Nobody is gonna take your head off if you’re lazy in the center lane. What the fuck.”

The fourth mile is important. It is not a kind teacher, but it is a good one. The fourth mile will prepare you for holding the hand of a woman you love as you watch the drugs from the chemotherapy bag slowly drip into her body, like the tick of a stopwatch. In that fourth mile you will learn how to solemnly acknowledge that every passing holiday with her is likely the last, so let’s make it a fucking rager. You will keep holding that same hand as she wilts before your very eyes, but she dies safe in her own bed. Polska mozna. The clock keeps ticking. The fourth mile. The fourth mile is where the magic happens.

During the fifth mile, the sun starts to come out. You don’t feel any better, but you’re surprised that you don’t feel any worse. Like swimming upwards from a sinking ship, towards the sun glittering off the water above. Maybe there is room for hope. Maybe it won’t always be like this. It can’t rain forever. The pack will have thinned out. People have fallen off. Not everyone survives the trial of the fourth mile.

The sixth mile is when you are allowed to thirst again, to be conscious. Just a few miles ago, you were a glorified set of organic rubber tubing and a fleshy computer firing electrical signals from a calcified housing unit you call a skull, but not anymore.  Your legs are pumping battery acid, but that doesn’t matter. You’re almost home. Everyone else has fallen off. You’re running on your own, but now you can hear the crowd again. The Kenyans have a saying. I don’t know the original Swahili, but supposedly it means “to light a fire in your heart”.

You will finish the sixth mile in a proud, steady, thumping rhythm. Because it all comes down to the bell lap. What a stupid sport. Six miles down, and you still have to throw down another 400m. Of course, you do. In this ridiculous pursuit of bells, fake guns, and running in circles, what’s one more?

The final four hundred. You’ve always had a strong finish, but you’ve never considered it an act of bravery. Anyone can do anything for one minute. One of the ladies’ assistant coaches knows you’re feeling it: “I want sixty Quinn!” Four hundred meters in 60 seconds. You’re so far ahead of everyone that it would take a starter pistol to the temple to lose, but you still think the same old shit talk as if someone were right on your ass as you open up and pump your arms.

“Money’s on the table, boys. Come and get it fucker. Chase me if you think you’ve got it in you. You think you’re brave enough to follow? Go fuck yourself.”

These words can be said in so few gestures as ragged breathing while one athlete hawks the other down or pulls away. Come and get it. You’ll enter the bend to begin the final 200m. Light speed. The crowd is growing louder. Light speed. Let’s go home. 100m. Let’s go home. 50m. Let’s go home.

The tape is broken. The job is done. You don’t immediately fall to your knees, but you think of Sir Roger Bannister explaining how he felt after conquering the four-minute mile:

My effort was over and I collapsed almost unconscious, with an arm on either side of me. It was only then that real pain overtook me. I felt like an exploded flashlight with no will to live; I just went on existing in the most passive physical state without being quite unconscious. Blood surged from my muscles and seemed to fell me. It was as if all my limbs were caught in an ever-tightening vice.

You will stumble into the fieldhouse, and you might even throw up in the showers. It’s fine. There’s nothing in your stomach anyway. The pH in your body is all fucked up, but you know it’ll end soon. You’ll look down at the veins in your legs, pulsing in anger, and you will thank them for still sending blood through your body, despite the ordeal you’ve put them through… but your brain will be throwing a party. Baddest dog in the kennel. You want proof? Scoreboard. Women lie. Men lie. But that beautiful, accursed stopwatch will never deceive you. The clock never stops ticking.

You’ll pound a Powerade, but you won’t dare touch a muscle milk. Some jumper or thrower will ask if you’re going to some party. Fuck that. You’ll saddle up and go home to stare at the TV, not even really watching it. Your brain doesn’t have the resources to make feelings.

The next day your legs will ache, but you will peel yourself out of bed to wince through a quick 30-minute jog. It doesn’t even deserve the title of a run. It’s a jog. You know it will speed up the healing process, and your biochemistry is back to normal. You can talk to people and not feel like a zombie.

On Monday, you will go to practice. Friends, trainers, and teammates will congratulate you. You will play the loveable rogue, saying that it was nothing, that it was a fun time, but you will be touched by it all more than words can express. It’s somehow even better when they weren’t there, but they “heard”. Because they love you and want you to know that they bore witness in some capacity. You will strive to love them back just as hard.

Those first Monday and Tuesday practices will be all about nursing the body back to health, healing battered quads and hamstrings. But Wednesday. Wednesday is light speed, 12x200m with long recoveries. Fast, swift, and light in the Florida sun as students walk by the chain link fence and hear the clatter of spikes and flats on that gorgeous, garnet track.

By the end of Wednesday, it will be like nothing happened, as it should be. We’ve got another in three weeks. There will always be another run. There will always be another track workout, another rep, another lap, another tick of the stopwatch. The clock never stops ticking.

Maybe you will stay that summer to power clean and bench press while you trot around a deserted Tallahassee cityscape. Maybe you will drive out to the trails sometimes, but you will probably always love running around town and hearing the blare of a friend’s car horn between the music pounding in your headphones.

You will remember that final 400m years later when you are running in the Himalayas. The fathers you work with will come out of their houses to scream at you as if you were some dark phantom they had to shout at to keep away from their front door. Knowing the cheeky Nepalese sense of humor, they probably told their daughters a similar story.

You will round the corner for camp atop the Roof of the World. You will see Everest looming in front of you, that mountain you drink your coffee in front of each morning and stare at in wonderment. You will pump your legs as you’ve done countless times. Last 200m. Let’s go home. You will again think to yourself that this is how that mustang in Wyoming must feel.

Their estate is not the largest, but it is theirs.

The royal dance floor sits next to the royal stove. They bring in only the finest musicians that Spotify can offer. Everyone from Aretha Franklin to Hozier comes to town to play just for them. There’s the safe, warm crackle of eggs on the burner where the royal spatula proudly watches over its post. The band plays on while the royal refrigerator opens and closes.

The noble steed lounges on his dog bed in the corner, belly full of IAMS and joint supplements but still eyeing that chest of frozen treasures. Long in the tooth and white in the muzzle, but brave and loyal as ever, ready for Lady Fair to jump from castle walls and land safely in the saddle.

The royal couch is always ready to welcome ambassadors from far-off lands, but when it is not in use it is reserved for the gentle singing of songs and telling of secrets. For lazy afternoon naps and the planning of daring adventures.

The royal balcony is used to house the royal tea lights and watch snow flurries fall gently on the good people of the kingdom below. They shout down and back up at each other sometimes as the city glows before them.

The royal chariot contains keepsakes of nobility gone by, reminders from whence we came. A mobile shrine to ancestors past, dedications to how they found themselves the inheritors of the most beautiful kingdom in all of the known lands.

The royal bedroom is the most sacred of places. There is a drawer full of old sweaters. They are sized for the king, but he is forbidden from wearing them. There is a bookcase full of everything from Hemingway to Tina Fey. There are Monet paintings and classic tapestries to dress the walls.

The Little Castle contains every earthly delight imaginable, but this is soulless without the warmth that people bring to it. The music and tea lights mean nothing without the hum of conversation or the playful bark of a noble steed. This is what makes it the greatest manor in all the land.

By Sean Quinn

I’ve always had to wrap my wrists well. I can’t remember the last time I popped a knuckle, but I’ve always had to baby my wrists. My shoulders and knuckles are indestructible, but if I’m not careful about nursing my wrists after a layoff, I can’t turn a doorknob the next day without being an absolute crybaby.

That’s an interesting thing about fighters: the very real need to emanate a sense of invulnerability along with the deep-rooted desire to put on a show. I think that’s why the American Staffordshire Terrier was hand-picked for his/her proclivities.

“Bake, Bake, it’s in my mouth.”

“Don’t worry Babe. You’ve got ‘em. Let’s go Home.”

“Let’s go Home.”

There’s nothing more infuriating than watching the first round and hearing somebody yell out “hit him!” You can have the baddest left hook this side of the Mississippi, but all it takes is one hard shot to the liver, and suddenly you’re 8 years old and scared. This is where the rubber meets the road. He’s just as scared of you as you are of him.

The first round is a gentle dance, sensing one’s timing, and getting a feeling for each other’s reach. Hopefully, it’s the most violent first date you’ll ever be on.

The middle rounds show how things will play out. Who has mastered the craft, and who has just cultivated a jaw that just won’t quit? There is a saying in distance running:

“Run the first third with your brain, the middle with your body, and run the finale with your heart.”

The same is true in combat sports. Be a miser with your energy, but then everyone has a breaking point. There’s nothing more sorrowful than seeing a fighter with a capable body, but the eyes are hollow.

“No mas. No mas.”

I understand the immediate joy in seeing that in an opponent’s eyes: blood in the water. To beat someone is one thing, but to take their will is an entirely different ordeal. It feels good at the time, but ten minutes later you want to tell them that they were brave. You feel exposed to an intimate part of their soul that you never had any business looking into.

I am of the personal belief that that piece of vulnerability should only be reserved for quiet, dark hours in a bedroom or the silence of a dance floor as the songs change and you hear a soft voice singing into your ear to fill the void. You don’t give that to anyone else. To do otherwise is a death sentence. Otherwise, it should only be greeted with a loving embrace and the assurance that you were courageous in defeat.

To those who dare.