Deep Thoughts While Running (or, why I should stick to biking)

Last year, we saw Cloud Cult play with the Minnesota Orchestra and it was fantastic. It was so good that, in early August, we bought tickets for the similar-ish March 2020 show, and I bought the violinist coffee and a pastry at my neighborhood coffee shop because she goes there, too.

I went "running" last Friday night and again tonight because the weather was nice but I didn't have time for a bike ride. I'm not really a runner. My dad was my cross country coach for two years, until I decided I'd rather date the runners than actually run. When I was in my early 30s, my dad and I did a 5k and as I got tired near the end, he ran backwards for a while to talk to me and encourage me to catch up.

Anyhow, as I was running, I was thinking about the phrase in this Cloud Cult song that I was listening to: "But you can't know beauty if you don't know pain."

Although I prefer this song for its other lyrics ("You got a breathe a little deeper, you gotta suck it, suck it in, there's your meditation" and "Some days you give thanks, some days you give the finger"), I've thought about this phrase about beauty and pain on and off over the past couple of years. There's a similar phrase in a Modest Mouse song: "If life's not beautiful without the pain, well, I'd just rather never ever even see beauty again." I always thought that was a pretty extreme sentiment, but it is a pretty song.

In his recent book, Jeff Tweedy talks about the suffering artist idea and says that people don't need to suffer to create music or art, that it is kind of a load of bull that we'd expect artists to have to go through more than other people to be able to do their jobs.

Because I love all things Tweedy (spoiler alert), I had sort of adopted and adapted this view and still believe that you can be happy and find beauty in things without suffering as a contrast.

But now, I have to throw into the mix two own writings of my dad's - - a letter to his siblings when his mother died and a poem we just found of his entitled, "September." In both, he talks about trees needing to be scarred to flourish as a metaphor for human suffering and happiness. I still don't know that I buy it, but it gave me some things to think about when I trotted in a most unflattering way around the lake today.

Minnehaha Creek headed into Lake Hiawatha

Lake Hiawatha where the Creek pours out toward
the Mississippi River. If you zoom in you can
see the Mpls skyline in the distance.

So, yes, deep thoughts by Maggie who most definitely is not a runner and is trying to squeeze in any sort of cardio even though she really needs more butt-on-seat time before the California ride. 

(Oh, and by the way, if anyone is cyberstalking me and thinks my house is going to be vacant when I go to California, it isn't. And I have nothing to take anyhow. But the house will still be occupied.)