Yesterday, the last of April, and my mother's birthday, a race on the beach. Ten K up and down the sand, with the clouds of sunrise reflecting, first gray, before the sun has a chance with them, and then the broad strokes of pink and yellow and orange and purple and gray. And people gathering there on the hard flat surface of the beach near the ocean. Watching the wind whip up the waves and drive the crest fast upwind. Race time and more people and rain and the possibility that Space X will launch something from nearby Cape Canaveral, so the first two miles or more during rests, turning around and glancing back over my shoulder to see if it happened. And it doesn't, so I watch the people on the beach with their phones and cameras aimed toward the cape and if I see someone point or lift their camera or stand up and look, I'll turn around, but I don't. And I'm running so hard and the wind is blowing back at me that I am surprised when I turn around and suddenly I'm running like the jet-stream, pushed by what was a headwind into remarkable (for me) feats of athleticism--sailing along on the same old beating of the feet in sand, but so much faster, so much lighter, so much more ready to finish this race and . . . and . . . and then what? So right now it is the race and not to worry about the then what--it will come when the race is over and when I cross the line and press the button on my watch that says that I've done what I've come to do and walk away from the finish line, medal and lei and short breath and all. And still the wind pushes the ocean and the crests scurry downwind tearing up the surf and everything is done and not done and I'm still not concerned about what comes after because, well, because the beach.
Robert de Boron and the Prose Merlin
There are so many wonderful things about the internet: there was a time when a scholar had to order through ILL and wait for weeks or months before he or she could set eyes on such works as Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini or Robert de Boron's Prose Merlin . No more. from Prose Merlin Robert de Boron Full wrothe and angry was the Devell, whan that oure Lorde hadde ben in helle and had take oute Adam and Eve and other at his plesier. And whan the fendes sien that, they hadden right grete feer and gret merveile. Thei assembleden togedir and seiden: "What is he this thus us supprisith and distroyeth, in so moche that oure strengthes ne nought ellis that we have may nought withholde hym, nor again hym stonde in no diffence but that he doth all that hym lyketh? We ne trowed not that eny man myght be bore of woman but that he sholde ben oures; and he that thus us distroyeth, how is he born in whom we knewe non erthely delyte?" Than ansuerde anothir fende and seide
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