26. Non-negotiables and the quest for immortality
Running, writing, and the joy of being a spaced out artist
Hello friends,
What are the non-negotiables that inform your life choices? A few of my current non-negotiables are writing, walking, and meditation. For more than 30 years, running was one of the non-negotiables that defined my life, especially after I moved to San Francisco the second time, the year I turned 26.
Be sure to scroll down for some pictures of my new writing shed at O’Hanlon!
Running in the city
The Pink Palace was located on 3rd Avenue at Balboa Street in the Richmond District, only a few blocks from the 1994’s Anza Asylum. I chose the neighborhood specifically for its proximity to the ample running trails in both Golden Gate Park and the Presidio. One of the reasons I was so obsessed with San Francisco was that it offered the best weather and running trails of any major city I knew. And, it happened to contain a decent swath of advertising agencies, at one of which I landed my first real job.
Mark was obsessed with San Francisco for different reasons. He had wanted to move there before he met me, and I was one of the catalysts that brought him there. The non-negotiable in Mark’s life is music. He had visited the Bay Area often to see the Grateful Dead before Jerry Garcia died, and was excited by the local alternative music scene. Back then, it seemed like everyone in San Francisco was either in a band or a part of some creative scene, and he wanted in. He loved seeing concerts at the Fillmore, its walls covered with posters from legendary shows in rock music history. His musical partner in Boulder (they had an acoustic duo and later formed a band) moved to San Francisco that year, and Mark quickly followed suit after getting a sales job at KFOG, the famous rock radio station.
Sensory heaven
At least five days a week, rain, shine, or fog, I pounded a quarter mile of sidewalk before entering the cypress-lined avenues of Golden Gate Park or the hills of the Presidio. I breathed in the ocean air and the grassy scent of wide lawns that turned bright green in the winter. I watched the ducks swim across the man-made ponds and climbed hills to glimpse the Golden Gate Bridge or the TransAmerica Pyramid through the treetops. My shoes permanently smelled like eucalyptus, the messy trees’ long, angular leaves and peeled bark littering the trails alongside their giant trunks. Running in San Francisco was a sensory heaven all my own, a time to commune with nature and clear the thoughts from my head.
In Boulder, I had continued racing—the Bolder Boulder again in 1996 and the Steamboat Half Marathon. In 1997, I ran San Francisco’s Bay to Breakers for the second time, placing #883 out of 75,000 runners. The competition was perhaps a validation for my hobby, but I never progressed to the point where I could place in my age group.
Running is in my DNA
When I discovered my father’s identity from a DNA test in 2022, my obsession with running suddenly made sense. My mother had told me about the champion runner in her past. When I was about 13, she showed me this medal he won (and gave her) in 1969.
I secretly wondered if he could be my father, but she said he was “an old boyfriend,” and dismissed the matter. She had been so heartbroken she couldn’t talk about it; their relationship was too complicated to explain to a 13-year-old.
Internet research in 2022 revealed that Graham, my father, had been a women’s cross-country coach. In 1970, he won a U.S. Masters marathon in San Diego. As a widower and single parent living in Brockton, Massachusetts, his training regimen and trip to San Diego would not have been possible without my mother’s care for his daughters (she was the family’s live-in nanny from 1968 to 1971).
Shortly after firing my mother upon learning she was pregnant with me in 1971, Graham moved to San Diego with my half sisters. Like me, running was a non-negotiable in his life, and San Diego is a far better place for running than Brockton!
If Graham hadn’t made it to San Diego for the race in 1970, would he have moved there the next year? If he had accepted that he was my father, would I have grown up with two older half sisters in San Diego? If I had grown up with him in San Diego, would I have flourished as a runner with his coaching? Would he have come to cheer me on at races like Bay to Breakers?
Running as a non-negotiable shaped my life as much as it did Graham’s; he stayed in San Diego until he died in 2008.
When nurture supports nature
Scotty, my stepfather, introduced me to running. He took me on my first run when I was 12 and we were staying in our camper at his sister’s place in Lake Monroe, Florida. The first mile I ran, to the St. John’s River and back, felt like gliding through thick, humid air underneath a canopy of trees that buzzed with insects, each stride bouncing off the sandy road. That initiation made outdoor exercise a non-negotiable in my life, and I would be chasing that runner’s high for 30 more years.
What non-negotiable habits did you inherit from your parents?
Writer in Residence at O’Hanlon
Running is no longer good for my body, but being in nature still is, and I’ve got plenty of it this month as the Writer in Residence at O’Hanlon Center for the Arts. With trees out the window and Flags in Mind photos behind me, I’m diving into the 108 journals from the past 15 years that I lugged up the hill for The Enlightenment Diaries project.
I’m pleased to say I’ve already become the spaced-out artist who wanders into the art center to use the restroom and can barely have a coherent conversation. To me, the whole concept of the artist residency is to evoke a non-ordinary state of mind so that I can create work from a deeper place. My plan is to get lost in the work.
Literary non-negotiables
Daily journal writing has been a non-negotiable since 2008. Here are some excerpts I found this week as I attempt to piece together the spiritual emergency that occurred for me in the summer of 2012 after a series of encounters with enlightened spiritual teachers.
June 10, 2012. As far as a devotional practice, I have this writing. Just think what a wealth of treasure I have here in these journals. My arguments with God. My dilemmas of faith, my experiences with men, with bosses, etc.
That summer, I was working on my graduate thesis and writing about my high school years. I had just read Conversations with God and tried channeling writing advice to myself.
June 22, 2012. Journal writing is just giving you to yourself. But you are more than that. You can give yourself to the world. You have the power to affect more people than yourself.
“Live Forever” is one of the Oasis songs that Mark and I loved. Music is Mark’s attempt at reaching immortality. Running used to give me an exhilaration that felt as if I would never die. Now, it’s the writing, backed up with meditation.
Perhaps our most urgent non-negotiables—the things we can’t help but do—are part of a quest for immortality, enlightenment, or just a way to feel whole when it’s so easy to feel broken.
While none of us will live forever, a non-negotiable devotion to what makes us feel whole will almost certainly help us live longer.
What’s your non-negotiable this summer? May it prolong your life!
Love, Lee Ann
Lee Ann, I hope you catch hold of the singular threads of your life and weave them, warp and weft, into the whole cloth of an amazing life story.