The Secret to Superhuman Strength (book)

"The Secret to Superhuman Strength" (2021)
Art & text: Alison Bechdel

Pengo's 2023 Summer Book Club

Reading Alison Bechdel’s third graphic novel, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, I was (of course) reminded of my own attempt to describe my obsession with exercise, the solo performance And Then You Die (How I Ran a Marathon in 26.2 Years).

That was very much my midlife crisis play, parts of it are a bit cringey. But I was trying to search my soul for reasons and understanding, to explain to a lay audience why running is important, even necessary, for my continued existence.

Bechdel’s experience has had a more varied relationship with activities of physical exertion, and describes them with her fascinating attention to detail, in written word and her unique, specific and elegant illustrative style. Not only how to run, bike, ski, hike, to perform karate and yoga, but also the accumulative effect these exercises have on the body, the self, the bank account, as well as interpersonal relationships and family.

"And Then You Die" (2009)
Art: Cat Kenney

By the end of calendar 2022, I was trying to accept the shape I was in, a 190 pound man. I had assembled a fine wardrobe of clothes that looked good fit me comfortably, that did not constrict or pinch; layered looks, a fuller beard. Accepting, but also concealing. Acceptance is good, if you mean it, but I wasn’t happy. 

It wasn’t all vanity, I didn’t feel good. I was uncomfortable, hile driving, sitting. Also, my breathing was not easy, walking up stairs left me winded. Sleeping I could feel my heartbeat throughout my body, sometimes hard, sometimes trembling. It wasn’t good.

And so I made the decision, starting last March First, to dry out, and to eat with more intention. Less sugar, fewer snacks, no alcohol (for that month, anyhow). More recently I made a commitment – with the encouragement of our eldest – to limit my alcohol intake to one drink a day, if that. I have kept this pledge for several week and it has made a difference.

And I resumed running, which I had nearly given up on. Since then I have taken no fewer than twenty runs each month, March, April, May, June, July, and on track for August. I thought I’d never enjoy running again, and I love it more than ever.

"The Secret to Superhuman Strength" (2021)
Art& text: Alison Bechdel

Bechdel’s own relationship with alcohol is something she shares in the book. Wine is her beverage of choice (full glasses and empty bottles rendered in loving detail) as well as her intimate relationships, and how exercise affects, or even fosters those. This was also a major part of my running play, with the pursuit of monogamy, like my recent alcohol control, arrived at as another commitment necessary for my continued happiness and existence.

The book is braided with narratives of the writers Bechdel was affected by at varying stages of her life’s journey – Kerouac, Coleridge, Fuller – and their relationship to nature and the outdoors – which are necessary partners of hiking, running, skiing, climbing, et al. – and the expression and understanding of the self.

This also comes up in my play, as I ruminate while running, over stories by Forster, Cheever, London.

"And Then You Die" (2009)
Art: Cat Kenney

But running or any exercise is one of the few opportunities we allow ourselves to think. Our bodies are occupied, with movement, so our minds are free to wander, consider, and ideally to make connections we may not allow ourselves to make when we are at rest.

Admittedly, this book, my play, these are documents of privilege. Many cannot afford to or are physically unable to spend time and money (all the money) on these physical pursuits. So I appreciate the kinship I share with this author in the ways her personal journey reflects my own* and I am grateful for the opportunities I have had to pursue them. Running has brought me great joy, and has provided a potential path to enlightenment.

The ex-wife once asked if I run the same path every day, because for the most part, I do. A mile to the park, a mile through the park, a mile home. Her question made me ask myself why I do. I doubted. Surely, I should change it up, for reasons both physical and mental. Don’t I get bored? Am I not progressing?

I have decided that, either metaphorically or literally, taking the same path each day may be a key to my enlightenment, or at least acceptance. In meditation, as in life, beginning again, from the start, is not a failure of achievement nor imagination. It just is. Every day we begin again.

It is not unintentional that the cover of The Secret to Superhuman Strength, as well as the chapter chapter pages, are evocative of ink and wash artwork. Bechdel’s relationship with Buddhism is a central theme of the book. As I set out each morning, I hope to enjoy the run itself, to be running, the action itself, not its end.

Last weekend we delivered our youngest to university, and now our house is once more a home for two. My sister-in-law congratulated me, as though it were me that had accomplished something, by successfully concluding some kind of undertaking.

But now that this stage of my life is past, I’d like to think I was more engaged with the journey than working toward the finish line.

My running blog, Daddy Runs Fast, is a chronicle of every run I have taken since 2006.  

*One thing that’s not entirely accurate about And Then You Die is what the protagonist – me – does for a vocation. I made myself a cartoonist. The remarkable Cat Kenney created all of the artwork used for the show.

Random Thoughts at the Commencement of the Season

This rock. The hardness. The completeness. The firmness. The ancientness. The water, in constant motion, all water the same water, always different water, the illusion of stillness, of the cessation of time. The trees beyond, evergeen, the uninterrupted vastness of the sky, from end to end, reaching high above, all the colors one can see.

How we fought. How she fought. I was stoic. I did not cry. I did not complain. I did not lose control. I kept it in. I remembered the past. I hoped for peace. And I wanted to be there. And I was. To help her cross over, to stop fighting.

How do we cease to be? How do we move from who we are to nothing at all? How can we live in the knowledge that all that lives must die, including ourselves?

By loving. By connecting. By enjoying everything and everyone. By making each moment the moment. The only moment. It is not about importance. It is not about significance. It is only about being. It is only is.

Process XXIX

And we’re back. That’s it! That was my summer break. Just kidding, I will get one later. For now, I am taking one, six-week course in early American poetry. Already I am dead chuffed, inspired by the works of Anne Bradstreet to compose a poem about selling my mother’s house.

Tuesday, my son turned sixteen, and I rose early to make him a special breakfast, to celebrate him. By eight I remembered I had not done my morning pages, and it was at that moment that I chose not to.

I chose not to. I wanted to exercise, and then to get right to my work, and not to sit and write. I chose to break a six hundred and eighteen day streak of writing, writing every morning. Because doing so had become a burden. I had to write. I was no longer choosing. It was about the record, not about the process.

Siri tells me that six hundred and eighteen days from now it will be late January, 2023. That is far into the future. Six hundred and eighteen days ago, my mother was still alive, and the pandemic was only just starting, on the other side of the world.

I have been working, I have been writing. I have been moving and I will be writing. We begin again, every day, as we all must begin again. And it is with this in mind, that I compose verse about my mother’s belongings.

Assessment

Anne & Zyrece

Today was my 300th consecutive morning of writing. When I noted that this morning, that number, at first I was proud of my achievement. Then I realized, that is nearly ten months. I started last September.

This year. This fucking year.

Whatever your plans, they were shelved in March. This year is now half over, and everything remains on hold. 2020 is canceled, and the only good thing we got out of any of this is Hamilton. Had we been asked, I am sure we all could have waited to see it at the movies.

We are, all of us, holding out for a miracle. That a vaccine is arrived at, faster than has ever been arrived at before, to eradicate the virus and return our lives to something like normal.

The artistic community, to take only one example, is in a desperate state. Our livelihood depends on live performance, audiences, sweat and spit and contact and everything that might possibly kill you.

This is what I wrote on “Day One,” before I had even started writing short plays each day. I was mentally preparing myself for the Chicago Marathon.

This day is cool and most perfect. I project my mind into the afternoon to come and wonder, can I accomplish this? The race is a little over a month, but today, today I will run, my feet -- not just my feet, my hips, and all the rest,carrying me across the city. I can do that, can’t I?

I am imagining the Cleveland that currently is, with runners through the Cultural Garden, and packing Edgewater Park. There will be water fountains and public restrooms, amenities which make the travel easier. Will it be a joy? Or arduous? Will I notice the good things? I cannot know.

Just revisiting this, knowing how much we have lost, how much I have personally lost since then, Sunday, September 8, 2019. I was running the twenty miles from our house to my mother’s house that day. She was waiting for me on the porch when I arrived. Sitting out with her boyfriend on a beautiful late summer’s day.

My mother was alive. The park was swollen with people. And I was unafraid.

Zach & Brian

So. Savory Taṇhā. We had a lovely rehearsal last night, this time with the "Friday" version, the one that will be performed a week from tonight. The script doesn’t change, but the performers will read different roles each evening; Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

I am directing, which is most practical but not what I prefer. Directing my own writing, I spend too much time on the wrong things. I prefer all my concentration be on the words themselves, paying greater attention to what is said rather than how it is being said. So that I might change them.

Then there is the frustration of working within the constraints of this medium. Light, space, reception, delay. My attention isn’t even on what’s being said, nor how, but how it all comes together, as a whole.

And yet, having said all that. I am loving this. This is where I am grateful to be working with such talented performers. This material, these scenes. Relationships played out in intimate fashion. This is an experience you cannot have on stage, this intimacy. The closeness, the vulnerability.

We had made plans. Other projects, different journeys. They did not include this show, though. There is a saying, "serenity can be achieved by trading expectation for acceptance." Or as I'd put it, by trading one expectation for another.

UPDATE: Cleveland Public Theatre presents the Zoom Premiere of "Savory Taṇhā (sixteen short plays performed by a rotating ensemble)" featuring Anne McEvoy Zyrece Montgomery,  Zach Palumbo, Brian Pedaci & Hillary Wheelock, February 17 - March 6, 2021.

Savory Taṇhā (sixteen short plays performed by a rotating ensemble)

Three hundred days. I have written for a half-hour every morning, without missing a day, for nearly three hundred days. That is some kind of record for me. And for the majority of those days I have written a short, one-page play.

They’re not all good, to be sure. But most of them are, I think. There is some repetition, repetition of theme, or style. Sense of humor. It’s all me. These are the scripts I have been offering to anyone who would like to create a video for the Short Play Project.

More recently I received an offer from Cleveland Public Theatre to curate an evening of short plays for their current Encounters (Here and Now) Series.

To create a sense of community and immediacy, CPT has eschewed the current trend to post performances online for enjoyment at any time, choosing instead to produce live performances through which an audience has the opportunity to interact before and after a show (like you do) and that the shows themselves are like an actual theater experience in that, if you miss it, you missed it.

Choosing the right combination of plays for this forty-minute production has been a curious challenge. I had asked CPT Artistic Director Raymond Bobgan for some feedback, a reflection of what he or others may see in my work which folks respond to. He said it was my themes of longing, passion, melancholy, desire, nostalgia … these are not wistful emotions I have come to in my middle years. I was nostalgic for the 1970s before they were even over, and that was when I was ten.

Regret, mourning, coping with my mother’s death, reevaluating my choices as a younger man … I will be honest. This is not necessarily the first thing I would choose to present right now, during the pandemic, during the uprising. But in the midst of chaos we are still engaged in life, and I am content to offer these sixteen short plays as a reflection of all of our relationships, our fears and hopes and doubts and dreams.

And of course, I need to be clever. To protest my own ability to write works for people from all walks of life, we cast five actors who will read different roles each of the three evenings it will be performed. The text remains the same, the interpersonal reactions are different.

For the title, I wanted something which captured this sense of longing, without sounding overwrought. Or pretentious. That was meant to be a joke.

Constant Craving, the title of that k.d. lang song came to mind. And Savory Taṇhā is a variation of that. Savory is one of my love's favorite words. Taṇhā is the desire to return, to repeat, to stay in one place. Not to move on. The living bardo. It is a cause of human suffering, the inability to accept change.

But it tastes so good.

UPDATE: Cleveland Public Theatre presents the Zoom Premiere of "Savory Taṇhā (sixteen short plays performed by a rotating ensemble)" featuring Anne McEvoy Zyrece Montgomery,  Zach Palumbo, Brian Pedaci & Hillary Wheelock, February 17 - March 6, 2021.

The Short Play Project: Philosophical Series

The short plays are always written in the morning, before I have had too much time to think, or censor myself. Sometimes the writing is merely a conversation I have with myself, debating an issue, or a thought.

I am not religious. I have considered Buddhism, though I would hardly call myself a practitioner. Even if I were, I am not prepared to consider that a belief, but a philosophy. These works reflect my recent feelings about finding peace, and making sense of a complicated planet.


"Smiling"
Performed by James Alexander Rankin


"Bodhisattva"
Graphic blandishments by Nancy Shimonek Brooks


"Karma"
Performed by JR Simons

You can watch the entire Short Play Project here.

Play a Day: Familium Vulgare

Melisa Tien

For Monday I read Familium Vulgare by Melisa Tien and available at New Play Exchange.

This past weekend, my wife and I attended a beautiful French Quarter wedding in NOLA for some Millennial aged artist friends, Melissa and Patrick.

I have mentioned Missy a number of times in this blog, she directed the reading of The Way I Danced With You at Playwrights Local. The service was conducted by Chennelle, another person who followers of the blog will be familiar with.

The ceremony itself was held in Preservation Hall, and afterward as we were comparing notes my wife and I both observed that this was the first time we had been witness to a marriage ceremony where we saw ourselves in the shoes of the parents, and not those of the young people involved.

So it was this morning as I began reading Familium Vulgare (translation: common family) which describes a Chinese-American family, the tragic and fatal allergic reaction the mother suffers from a bee sting, and the immediate fallout among the other members of the nuclear family - father, son and daughter.

The father is described as in his 50s, and so it is with me. When I was at school someone said you know you have matured as an actor when you can read a play without automatically casting yourself as the lead character. That’s as may be, sounds like just some more bullshit theater advice, regardless, may I suggest true maturity as a writer is creating a play in which everyone is the main character, no individual personality is more or less significant than the others.

And yet, to me, today, the father striving to cope with grief through his Buddhist philosophy is the main character. Your opinions may vary.

What Tien so movingly captures is the manner in which different folks struggle to manage the earth moving devastation of a recent loss; the father by clearing the decks, the son by visiting an revisiting recorded memories of the past, and the daughter through a psychic connection with the very creatures who brought death to her mother.

Who should I read tomorrow?

Lincoln In the Bardo (book)

“We’re only tourists in this life / Only tourists but the view is nice.”
- Everybody’s Coming To My House, David Byrne

“And life is finite
But shit, it feels like forever.”
- tonite, LCD Soundsystem

“And when my time is up, have I done enough?”
- Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story, Lin-Manuel Miranda

“We are blessed with love and activity, but not enough time.”
- Me, July 27, 2018

“We had again been granted the great mother-gift:
“Time.
“More time.”
- Lincoln In The Bardo, George Saunders

In fiction, ghosts are a manifestation of regret. Can a ghost exist without a belief in the need for its own existence? And that need is to complete something that had not been accomplished in life, as though life itself is defined by accomplishment.

Because it is, really. That is how we as humans define it.

In his riveting, ruminative novel, Lincoln In The Bardo, author George Saunders argues that life is what it is. What we do or what happens to us cannot be judged, it was what it was. No need to glorify not denigrate. Do what you can. Succeed or survive. Strive to do your best, surely. But let no one describe to you what that may be. Then, let go.

I find myself lamenting the scarcity of time. But time is not a thing. Life is a thing, the world is a thing. These can be valued, in the moment or not at all.

Three days ago I was sitting on the porch of a rustic cabin in Maine, listening to the sounds. My son’s peculiar and delightful laugh, the unfamiliar voices across the cove. I recalled that breakfast diner in Charlottesville, last month. (I remember -- the Nook!) The brick wall, the delicious odors; the coffee, the hash browns.

Today I sit at my desk to make a note of the memory. I hear the ticket printing machine, the brief, almost imperceptible whine of the copier. All of these things are special. They are not special because of what they are, they are special because they are what is.

I think I may be Buddhist.