THE LAST RACE: THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A MARATHON RUNNER

On Saturday the REGINA FARMER’S MARKET was the place to be ... for a busker.  On Saturday the sky was blue, the air warm and windless, and my guitar strings gleaming in the brightness of the morning sun.

Cap-a-pie I was hatless, a long-sleeved collarless dark fitted shirt, a pair of Jack & Jones walking shorts purchased in Amsterdam, and I wore sandals.  It was a glorious Saturday and my consumers were munificent.

Even so, the three and half hours that I stood and strummed, I kept wondering what my blog topic of today would be.  Dear reader, please know that I usually post my blog entry on a Sunday, but ofttimes do not have my topic until Saturday, the day before.  Once my topic has been decided, I create a snappy title and then off I go, rising at 5 o’clock Sunday morning to make a first draft.  I knew the QUEEN CITY MARATHON would be blocking the Regina roadways starting this morning at six a.m. (preventing me from my morning run), and could not for the life of me think of a snappy title … that is until this morning while not running, but instead sipping Americanos with cream and sugar.

The QUEEN CITY MARATHON is running right now while I type (pun intended).  I remember when I use to run marathons and I remember the moment I quit running marathons.  First, dear reader, without seeming the braggadocio and very much for the record, here is a brief history of my bona fide credentials for this quick commentary on running, hoping to convince you that I am much more than just a handsome scrivener, more than just eye candy atop a pair running shoes.

In 1977, the year it was published, I read THE COMPLETE BOOK OF RUNNING by JIM FIXX.  At the time I was enrolled at CARIBOO COLLEGE (now THOMPSON RIVERS UNIVERSITY) in Kamloops, British Columbia taking a scuba diving certificate through the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF UNDERWATER INSTRUCTORS (NAUI).  I smoked at the time. 

After reading THE COMPLETE BOOK OF RUNNING I took up running and decidedly had to quit smoking.  One cannot be a long-distance runner and a Players pack-a-day smoker.  (I must mention that one can be a scuba diver and a Players pack-a-day smoker, as was my instructor at the time.)   

Those years I mostly ran MCARTHUR ISLAND PARK and RIVERSIDE PARK both situated right in the city, though McArthur Island was in North Kamloops, and Riverside right along the South Thompson in downtown Kamloops.  Those were glorious years.

Moving to Regina I ran in WASCANA PARK, the second largest urban park in North America, bigger than CENTRAL PARK in New York, but smaller than STANLEY PARK in VANCOUVER.  Running WASCANA PARK changed my life.

My teaching assignment was as a GUIDANCE COUNSELLOR at BALFOUR TECHNICAL SCHOOL (now officially BALFOUR COLLEGIATE).  During my six year stay at Balfour, each morning I ran five miles to work, then ran around WASCANA LAKE every noon hour, and then ran five miles home.  At that time I was running at least thirteen miles each weekday. 

On weekends I did not run Saturdays, but rain or shine, frigid or humid, every Sunday I ran ten miles with my friend, BURT GIBSON.  Burt was the real marathon man.  Each year he ran not only the SASKATCHEWAN MARATHON, but also every year ran in the MANITOBA MARATHON and … the HONOLULU MARATHON.  Burt and I ran ten miles together every Sunday for over twenty-five years!

From Balfour I was transferred to the SALVATION ARMY YOUTH RESOURCE CENTRE (which officially came to be THE HOUSE OF CONCORD), an open-custody facility for young offenders sixteen years old and upward.  At Concord we (the twelve youth in custody and I) ran three and half miles every morning before lunch and before ENGLISH and ART classes.

I had been invited by my REGINA SCHOOL DIVISION DIRECTOR and the MINISTRY OF EDUCATION (SASKATCHEWAN) to create an academic program for young offenders (of which there was not one at the time).  The program that I introduced was based upon that of JIM DEATHERAGE’S READING, ‘RITING, and RUNNING.  Jim was an American English teacher that had been written about in RUNNER’S WORLD MAGAZINE, of which I was a subscriber.  I phoned Jim and he graciously gave me the spiel of what exactly he did to promote such a program. 

Shortly after several discussions with Jim, I worked and ran out of the HOUSE OF CONCORD for seven years, during which I wrote my Master's thesis, ONE HUNDRED DAYS AT THE HOUSE OF CONCORD:   An Ethnographic Study of Young Offenders in an Exercise Programme (and defended such in 1994).  

While assigned to those seven years at the House of Concord, Burt joined me and the students (those young offenders) to run in the ECHO LAKE ROAD RACE, a half-marathon run around Echo Lake, hosted each May by the town of Fort Qu’Appelle chamber of commerce.  Burt and I had run that race at least twenty times together.

Besides having run many ECHO LAKE ROAD RACES, my running years with Burt also included several WASCANA RELAYS (one of which we ran four times just to have a marathon run that day), and two twenty-six mile SASKATCHEWAN MARATHON races, held in SASKATOON, SASKATCHEWAN.  (I remember one marathon it was raining at the start line, snowing near the wall, then the sun shining brightly over the finish line.)

Back to ECHO LAKE.  Every Echo Lake Road Race, Burt and I would drive out together, register and pay our fee at the start line.  The race was always agog with hundreds of runners, mostly rabid, some nondescript, and some panjandrum, and then side-by-side we would run the thirteen miles, just the two of us, yakking and solving the same ol’ same ol’ political state of the province and country and planet we did as every other weekend we ran together.  After every Echo Lake race we would sit next to one another in the town hall during the winner awards ceremony, wearing our Echo Lake running caps and munching on oleaginous beer sausages (both free gratis with the registration fee).  Following the awards ceremony where all the same runners year after year won the same awards for finishing first, while others like Burt and me would sometimes win a watch in a random draw (these races were in part sponsored by TIMEX), and before driving the hour back to Regina from Fort Qu’Appelle, we would ritually make our way to the local ice cream stand, sit outside at the lonely picnic table, and lick our delicious made-with-dairy-product treats.

One particular May long weekend, I picked up Burt for our drive to the Qu’Appelle Valley for another Echo Lake Half Marathon Road Race.  A few minutes outside Regina I posed to Burt this question: 

"Are we training for something?"

Burt replied, "What do you mean?"

To which I replied,  "Are we training for something?  Here we are driving out to Fort Qu’Appelle again for another run, a run where we run together and chat and solve all the world problems.  Except this time, we have to pay.  We are paying to do the same thing we do every weekend, save for that ugly runner’s cap and greasy sausage we get for signing up."

Burt:  "Hmmm …"

Self:  "Hmmm …"

I turned the car around, with Burt’s permission of course, and we ran ten miles through Wascana Park, after which we did not snack on a sausage, nor sport a new running cap.

For the both of us, that was our last official road race.

  

‘Tis bittersweet for me to write that I am still running, though ever leery of slipping on the ice, substituting JACOB’S LADDER for running until the ice has melted. 

‘Tis bittersweet because in 1984 my writing and running hero, Jim Fixx, died in a ditch in Vermont while on his daily ten mile run. 

‘Tis bittersweet because in 2011 my long time running mate, Burt Gibson, had a heart attack and has not run since.

 

THE REAL MARATHON MAN

HYPNOTHERAPY: THE SKINNY, THE SMOKE, AND THE MIRRORS

Yesterday the SASKATCHEWAN ROUGH RIDERS won their LABOUR DAY CLASSIC against the WINNIPEG BLUE BOMBERS, and I was there at game end, busking at KINGSWARD exit, reaping the munificence of my consumers, half of the 30,000 as they passed by, basking in their glorious cheers of victory (pun intended) ‘neath the summer five o’clock sun.

As I said my thank-yous, Thanks man, Thanks ma’am, Thanks a lot, Thank you … thank you … thank you, my mind was not there, but elsewhere, thinking about my brand new HYPNOTHERAPY PRIVATE PRACTICE.

I WANT TEN VOLUNTEERS WHO WISH TO LOSE WEIGHT OR STOP SMOKING.

GET SKINNY OR BREATHE FREELY THROUGH HYPNOSIS.

CALL NEIL CHILD (HYPNOTHERAPIST) AT (306) 591 – 7131.

This is the advertisement I’ll be running in KIJIJI over the next few days.  I’ve already had several volunteers from my workplace, females wanting to lose weight, one male wanting to stop smoking.

My advertisement could have read: 

YOUR LIFE IS ONE OF RUNNING IN CIRCLES?   

DO YOU LACK CONTROL IN YOUR LIFE?   

TRY HYPNOTHERAPY.

HYPNOTHERAPY can help you change the way you think about things, the way you feel about things, and the way you behave about things.

Here is my Q & A skinny on HYPNOSIS and HYPNOTHERAPY:

• WHAT IS HYPNOSIS?

HYPNOSIS is a contrived (but based on a natural) induced state of deep relaxation and focused attention. Subjectively engrossed in a good book or television program, a mind adrift in day dream, the automaticity of driving home, are all habitual and natural occurrences and very much akin, if not examples, of hypnosis.  The action of Hypnosis is to enter an altered state and then receive suggestions, as designed by both the therapist and client.

• WHAT IS HYPNOTHERAPY? 

HYPNOTHERAPY is abstruse, simply, it is a psychotherapy that uses hypnosis as part of the treatment.

• CAN ANYONE BE HYPNOTIZED?

Yes, anyone can be hypnotized as long as they are willing.  You need only to be smart enough to achieve concentration and clever enough to know what is good for you to be hypnotized.   

• WILL I REMAIN IN CONTROL IN HYPNOSIS?  

Yes, when you are hypnotized you are aware constantly and will succumb to activities you desire, and succumb only to what is consistent with your belief system.  You will neither permit nor act upon any suggestions that are against your personal values.

However, if you go to a stage hypnotist, you might embarrass yourself, quack like a duck, get your hand stuck on a wall, do the moon walk, that sort of thing.  A stage hypnotist is there to give the audience members a good time at your expense.  A hypnotherapist is there to help you change direction in your life. 

Stage hypnosis is not a profanation of clinical hypnosis, but rather just that other road in the wood, the one most people take on the hypnagogic highway; HYPNOTHERAPY rather, represents that road less traveled by, the one that has the potential to make all the difference in a person’s life.

• HOW DEEP WILL I BE WHEN IN A HYPNOTIC TRANCE?

In a hypnotic trance, you are not sleeping.  You are conscious of everything around you.  You are awake. You are alert.  You are responding to the suggestions of the hypnotherapist, who is in turn, merely responding to your own suggestions of your life improvement (that have been discussed beforehand).  When you acquiesce to hypnosis, your immediate actions and behaviors are never the whims of the hypnotherapist, but rather the responses to the whims of yourself.

• HOW MANY SESSIONS WILL I NEED?

Unlike conventional therapies where four to six sessions is the norm, Hypnotherapy, typically, takes just one session. Smoking is a one-time session.  Weight loss could be a couple sessions. Other desired changes take certainly no more than four sessions.

• WHAT IS THE FREQUENCY OF SESSIONS? 

Ideally, sessions should be spaced a week apart. Each session is usually 60 to 90 minutes. 

• HOW WILL YOU KNOW IF IT WORKS? 

Your success is your proof.  If you accomplish what you intended to, then you were hypnotized.

And now, my skinny on my five stages of HYPNOTHERAPY:

• STAGE ONE:

Each session begins with a bright-line, so as to provide an unambiguous guideline for both hypnotherapist and client. This is the INTRODUCTION, a PRE-RELAXATION, a phatic chat to get on with …

• STAGE TWO:

This is a DELIBERATION, a DISCUSSION and DETAIL OF SCRIPTS to be employed during the session.

• STAGE THREE:

This will be an actual hypnotic INDUCTION, a formal RELAXATION cadenced one-versation focused on RELAX … RELAX … RELAX…

• STAGE FOUR:

This stage is a DEEPENING of the INDUCTION, where the prescribed SCRIPTS are ENACTED, UTILIZING an ALTERNATE REALITY through cap-a-pie IMAGINATIVE IMAGERY, the light or energy on your body from head to toe for example.  

• STAGE FIVE:

This is the RE-AWAKENING, usually to wherever left during a preliminary INDUCTION SCRIPT.

HYPNOTHERAPY is both a cathexis and a catharsis, demanding an investment of emotional energy and imagination, whilst purging an habitual defective behaviour in exchange for a psychological benefit.  Very few individuals have nothing in their lives they wish to improve upon.

HYPNOTHERAPISTS WANT ONLY FOR THE CLIENTS WHAT THE CLIENTS WANT FOR THEMSELVES.

The bread-and butter-client-market for hypnotherapy, the two improvements most people desire seem to be are to STOP SMOKING and to LOSE WEIGHT.

Everyone knows that smoking is bad for the health.  Smoking, like most maladies, is an addiction, and one that can be overcome mostly by changes in behavior.

Everyone knows that skinny has been the glam in the last few decades of our commercial world.

LOSE WEIGHT means to change eating habits.  

Hypnotherapy will help clients resist cravings for nicotine.  Hypnotherapy will help clients develop a more relaxed relationship with food.  Hypnotherapy will help clients develop new habits that will become part of their everyday lives.

TRUE CONFESSIONS: 

I’ve a couple of acquaintances (and so do you), both of which are female, who WANT to get SKINNY, not so much for their physical health, but for their physical and sexual presentation (surprise, surprise); one an Elizabethan beauty, the other an Amazon warrior.  Both regard themselves as zaftig, one says she is “chunky” the other says she is “fat.”   And having several discussions with each, both want skinny for reasons sensual and sexual.

Your past is a ghost.  Each new day is a tabula rasa for personal success.  Stop smoking.  Get skinny.  Look in the mirror.  Mirror, mirror ...  on the wall .... who has the power ... to fix it all.  

IT WAS YOU ALL ALONG!

JACK AND JACK: ANOTHER CARPE DIEM EXPERIENCE

L - R: DARREN, JACK AND JACK, SELF

Busking is always a carpe diem experience, simply because you just never know what is going to happen or who you are going to meet.  (Really, this notion is true for anyone and any day can be one of derring-do; however, this is a blog about busking and I’ll express my thoughts accordingly.)

On this particular Tuesday I was joined by my Phantom Tide band-mate, Darren, and his son, Jack.  This was Jack’s first time busking and so we set our strumming to be at the THE ITALIAN STAR DELI on Victoria Avenue in Regina, one of the best spots in the city to busk!

Jack, still salted in Maritime Carpe Diem mode, and sporting a newly stamped tattoo of a blue carrack on his bicep, and donning a black East Coast Lifestyle cap on his noggin, brought along his bongos.  Darren brought his banjitar, and I brought my twelve-string.  What a handsome trio we were!  Jack had been practicing his drumming skills and it showed.  Darren is a guitar master -- he plied his signature style whilst growing up on Cape Breton Island, and I am but a thrummer and hummer, honing my guitar and harp skills mostly when I busk.

My deprecating self-described strum has been for some time the lines:  For every one hundred people who pass me while I busk, ninety-five will think I am an awesome guitarist and harpist, and the other five will have some guitar skills and recognize my real abilities.  Guys like Jack Sample will pass by just one in a thousand.

Well guess who finally passed by this particular busking Tuesday?  Jack Semple, of course! 

Jack Semple is the famous blues guitarist from Regina, Canada.  Jack won a Juno award in 1991 and was the star in the 1994 movie, Guitarman.  Guitarists don’t get any better than Jack!

Of course Jack was gracious enough to pose for pictures, and that is busker Jack sitting on guitar Jack’s knee, thus explaining the JACK AND JACK blog title.  (Also, Jack is a synonym for sailor, which seems apt considering young Jack and Darren had just returned from an East Coast vacation.) 

ANOTHER CARPE DIEM EXPERIENCE in the title, I’ve written about (in this blog) at least twice before: A PLACE IN THE SUN:  AN ESSAY ON BUSKER CARPE DIEM (April 2^nd, 2011), and WHERE YOU ARE IS WHERE IT’S AT: AN ESSAY ON CARPE DIEM, ZEN, EXISTENTIALISM, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND BUSKING (December 5^th, 2010).

CARPE DIEM has been one of my favorite themes since my university days as an English Literature Major.  CARPE DIEM was first introduced by the Latin poet, Horace in 23 BC.  It has been translated as SEIZE THE DAY, PLUCK THE DAY, ENJOY THE DAY, and GRASP THE DAY.  Allow me to ramble a bit on each.

SEIZE THE DAY, the most popular interpretation, seems too agog for my liking.  Seize the day seems to more express the YOLO (You Only Live Once) notion that has become band-wagon as of late.  Seize the day almost implies that nothing else matters, so therefore be reckless in every regard.

PLUCK THE DAY, as I understand, is the literal translation.  PLUCK, as in picking fruit, suggests that when the day is ripe, pluck it, and put that unforgettable particular day into your straw basket of memories.  This is close to my thinking, but not quite.  The metaphor of moments being ripe and ready for plucking just does not work for me.

ENJOY THE DAY I find anodyne.  Enjoy is rather a weak verb no matter the context.  I just think that enjoy gives a rather mild message, rather than one which is memorable.

GRASP THE DAY I very much like.  And it is beseeming to me because this is what I learned from Harry Dillow, an English Professor of mine, at the University of Regina. 

Hello, Harry, wherever you are! 

Harry was a lover of Carpe Diem; at least he seemed so to me and everyone in his 17^{th -} CENTURY ENGLISH POETRY classes.  Grasp the Day connotes an awareness or understanding, a grasp of the situation.  Grasp the Day suggests that one ought to be aware that our days are numbered, and therefore it seems favorable, even obligatory to find something meaningful in every encounter, to grasp each as an understanding that such an appreciation is finite and therefore to be savored (very much akin to the pluck the day literal translation).

Others, others with big names, have embraced the notion of CARPE DIEM:

• Live as if you were to die tomorrow.  Learn as if you were to live forever. (Mahatma Ghandi)

• Yesterday is gone.  Tomorrow has not yet come.  We have only today.  Let us begin. (Mother Teresa)   

• Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.  (Helen Keller)

This week I was asked to thrum and hum at the SHOPPERS ON BROAD Tree of Life hotdog sale, for which I did GRASP for a couple of hours and did so gladly!

Courtesy of Skyler, SHOPPERS photographer

Other CARPE DIEM moments in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE for this week:

CAMILLE -- CONGENIAL AND STUNNING
(FRENCH EXPAT LIVING IN AMSTERDAM WITH FLATMATES ALINA, MARIO, AND TRAVERS)

JACK SEMPLE TRIBUTE TO LIGHTFOOT (ALBUM)

 Another soon-to-be CARPE DIEM experience:

 

My business card shall read:

• STOP SMOKING

• LOSE WEIGHT

• CHANGE YOUR LIFE

HYPNOTHERAPY

NEIL CHILD 
(306) 591-7131

Suggestions ... anyone ... anyone?
Pun intended ... everyone ... everyone!

     

BUSKER WARS: A COOK'S TOUR

ON THE SHANNON RIVER BOARDWALK IN LIMERICK, IRELAND

This last Saturday morning I was guitar busking at the Regina Farmers’ Market in the Downtown Plaza.  My buskspot was smack in the middle and on the north side of the gauntlet of vendors.  The weather was hot and muggy and the patrons slow and stingy.  My consumers were not munificent.

Bad enough.  And then a tall and dark and slim fellow unpacking his guitar and amplifier begins his set-up directly across from me, just twenty-five feet across the walk lane.  Let’s call him Stunned Stu.  As Stu looked me in the eye, I raised my hand suggesting he should stop.  He didn’t stop and I walked over to him.

“Not a good idea,” I said.

“Not a good idea what,” he replied.

“Why not,” he replied.

“You see me here busking right? “  I said.

“Yah.”

“It’s not cool.  You know we are in a buskerhood right.  Guitar brothers under the sun so to speak. You agree.”

“Yah.”

“Well it’s not cool. You’re setting up right on top of me.   I’d rather you set up elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere, just not here.”

“There’s an open space here.”

“Move okay.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere away from me.”

I did not smile and Stu packed up his amp and guitar and left.

Regina, a city of 200,000 people situated on the Canadian Plains, is my demesne, my home strumming ground.  The state of the buskerhood in Regina I find not in harmony, but in discord.

A few posts ago I wrote a bit about this buskerhood, and mentioned busker Myles as an example.  Myles, a guitar busker, had recently decided he owned the buskspot at MIKE’S INDEPENDENT on Broadway Avenue.  He had a signed and written contract to be there he said.  Not only was Myles refusing to move (said he had planned on being there all day and even into the evening), he also lied about his status.  Knowing full well he was self-aggrandizing, I stated firmly that I’d be returning in two hours to bump him.  When I returned he moved, but has not spoken to me since.

I shall give you the seriocomic COOK’S TOUR of the buskers I know plying their wares in downtown Regina.  I’ve changed the names to protect the guilty.

Myles I saw again just today.  He’s scruffy and is always seated on a folding picnic chair.  He has all the gadgets, a portable amp, a microphone and stand, a music stand, and his music sheets attached.  Myles just looks too busy for my busking liking (though the European trend is now having an amp and microphone – but the sheet music is still a no-no).  When I saw Myles this afternoon he was shirtless and had a lit cigarette stuck to the corner of his bottom lip as he sang Johnny B. Goode.  Myles did not even nod as I stood by his side.  He just puffed and sang.

If I stopped writing right now and took a three minute walk to Scarth Street I would bump into Dave the Fiddler.  Dave always wearing a cap and with his long sleeves rolled up to just past his elbows, sitting forever crossed-legged with his fiddle case filled with very few coins open at his feet.  Cockalorum Dave always makes lots of money (wink nudge to you, readers).  Every time I’ve chatted with Dave over the years he always says, “I am going soon.  I’ve made a couple of hundred dollars and I’m moving on.”

There is another regular fiddler, Fat Frank.  Fat Frank, ever disheveled and slobby with his too-short pants held up by his skinny suspenders, carries a plastic milk crate on which to sit, and plays mournful tunes the entire time he busks.  Frank seems friendly enough but, like the others, has no sense and respect for the space of other buskers.  Frequently I’ve had to move the ho-hum Fat Frank along to greener patches.  A couple weeks ago I noticed Myles yelling at him.

Bicycle Bob has busking skills similar to mine.  He’s a guitar strummer with a C harmonica.  Bicycle Bob tends to busk near the Cornwall Centre.  When he moves along, he always rides his bicycle.  I like Bicycle Bob.  He tells me his favourite spots are his secret spots, and that is where he goes when he rides out of the downtown.  Bicycle Bob always wears a tattered black cowboy hat, complete with the stamped strings cinched under his chin.

As far as the state of the buskerhood in Regina, we are not a coterie, but rather an imaginary clique from a consumer’s perspective.  (Brad, my National Hockey League scout friend, jokingly insists that I should start up the BUSKERS’ UNION!  Brad knows about hockey, not about huckstering.)  I’ve really no enmity towards these other local buskers; however, my egoism is necessary to maintain my status and my buskspots.  For the most part, each of these aforementioned buskers has considerable mettle, even though they are clochards.

Being a busker in Regina is not easy.  And not having a buskerhood, as the real tourist destinations have, can frustrate a real busker.  (This I know from my numerous buskations over the years to places in Alberta, British Columbia, and Europe.)  But I am but a faux-busker, and such nit-picks are welcome story treats for this self- appointed and arrogant buskologist.

The characters in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week shall keep marching in these snap shots:

ANGELINE PASSING THROUGH REGINA

LIMERICK, IRELAND

  

NEXT DOOR TO MICHAEL PAYNE'S HYPNOTHERAPY SHOPPE IN LIMERICK, IRELAND

ON THE PATH TO THE CLIFFS OF MOHER ... KILLARNEY, IRELAND

ON THE PATH TO THE CLIFFS OF MOHER

TRAV AT THE CLIFFS OF MOHER (NOTE THE CRUISE SHIP 200 METERS BELOW)

SELF AT THE CLIFFS OF MOHER

Hmmm ... 
Methinks to close with this CLIFFHANGER!
STAY TUNED (pun intended)!