Dear readers:
Sometimes I am not funny.
Most of the time I am not funny.
I am often sufficiently earnest to assess a pot of strawberry jam as “more goop I have to clean.”
Humor is a choice. Like any other choice, it can go great, or really stink up a room—or produce an annoyingly mixed bag of outcomes.
What I know is that choosing to frame each of my weeks through this outlet, where finding what’s funny is part of my imperative, is rehabilitative, and injects some life into what can get pretty corpsey on the reg. Humor is about perspective, and actively shifting mine on purpose on a regular basis helps me be less of a laundry pile of humanity.
However. Really everything is knowable or understandable only by way of contrast. I invite you all to read the following essay, which was published a couple years ago by Denver Quarterly (so the rights have now reverted to me). It was only available in print at the time, so I was unable to link to it then. I’m happy to share it now. You will likely recognize pieces of my voice, because none of us can be anything other than we are, thank goodness, but it’s definitely a different ballgame.
I hope you will enjoy the below, and find the contrast useful, invigorating, or an otherwise welcome contrast.
Fondly,
Laundry Pile
____
21 Ways to Start an Essay about a Marathon
1
Most marathon training schedules take you to a peak distance of 20 or 21 miles before the race. A standard marathon is 26.2 miles long. The last five miles on race day are likely to be the hardest, but if you’ve trained carefully, they say you’ll be able to carry your strength into the unknown.
How do you feel? my friend Kate texted me after my 21-mile run. I had almost given up twice, thinking I’d walk back to the car and spend the rest of the week finding a way to forgive myself.
I feel like garbage. My left calf felt like it was ripping away from the bone. My eyes were sandpaper and my whole body was swollen, clinging to several pounds of water, which made it puffy and stiff, as though this were the only way to dissent.
2
Twenty months ago, my friend Laura gave birth to my twin babies. The birthing took her just over four hours, with 17 minutes of pushing at the end. My husband and I were there.
Nine months ago, I started training for a marathon. Two days from now, I will run that race, which will probably take me just over four hours.
3
Kate recommended a chiropractor to me when I told her I had a tweaked hip.
I was relieved: I might not have to give it up. I’d worked for so long to get this chance, to run a marathon—this thing that somehow equaled the capability of my body, which had failed me so spectacularly in the past.
When I got to the chiropractor’s, he asked for my story.
— What story?
— The whole, long story that brought you here.
— I almost died after trying to stay pregnant for four months, and my organs failed from blood clotting, and the baby died, and I was in the hospital for three weeks, and didn’t recognize my body at all when I got home, and couldn’t move much for a long time, so when I could move again, I started running. And now I’m still running, you know, because I have to.
I figured he’d get it, because Kate had said he was a little odd, the way ultra-marathoners are.