Morning fog mixes with city pollution, the heavy haze filters the sun through white and brown.

Eager surfers wade into shallow water, others stretch, meditate, and welcome the sun.

A woman who each morning wears only a one-piece suit, no matter the weather, has already finished her routine swim.

Car park attendees tote florescent yellow striped vests over three layers of winter garb, waiting simultaneously for the heat of the sun and for the first patrons to arrive. Mercedes, BMW, Toyota and Ford. For me, barefoot in shorts and a T-shirt, this is a warm day spring day in Colorado.

On the beach, my bare feet press into the soft sand where the high tide delivered seaweed and shells hours before. Poorly paid employees of an unseen entity will labour in dress shoes and slacks to remove the undesirable debris.

I bend forward, barely able to reach my ankles, let alone toes. I welcome the pain that cascades through muscle in my back, shoulders, and lower legs. Heavy eyelids yet sleeping are flushed of excess blood, made lighter and more awake.

I commit to a half dozen simple moves borrowed from yoga, wondering if those who never stretch feel more or less ready for the run. As though my arms grew longer, or my legs less, I reach my toes, even press fingers into the sand.

In response to an invisible gun, I turn East and run.

Quick, light strides. The cool breeze at my back, my chest is a sail.

The front of my feet displace the quartz crystals, heels seldom leaving a mark. Head up, shoulders back, chest out. I look forward and around, the view compelling.

To my right the waves tumble over one another, competing to reach the shore. A half dozen attempts and then one spills over the others and well past where they had arrived before.

Feet, ankles, and lower legs now wet with salt tell me if the current comes from East or West, the temperature this day relatively warm.

I reach the first estuary outlet. Surface ripples the colour of tea reflect its depth. Soft waves of sand mirror those on the surface, the water only knee deep this time. I recall stream crossings in Colorado, Alaska, and Washington State, face upstream, and shuffle side to side to keep my balance.

Picking my way through the sharp shells deposited for a dozen meters on the other side, I again drop into my runner’s pace. Hard packed sand gives rebound to my mass for as much as it softens my stride.

The path before me is the one I have taken many times, and yet it is rebuilt twice with each orbit of the Moon around the Earth. I feel selfish, the labour of unseen hands prepare for me a totally new route for every run.

Perhaps someone will notice I have not renewed my membership to this facility, yet this morning I am unchallenged by those who claim payment due. Another kind of runner yet lies dormant in narcotic slumber.

Nearly four kilometres finds me at the second estuary outlet, a deeper, wider channel I have not yet attempted to cross. Its odour is strong, deep red from the natural oils of the local fauna or pollution I do not know.

I pause to enjoy the way in which the dunes have been reshaped over and over again. What was a meter high wall of sand just at the ocean’s edge is now a hundred meters wide, sickle shaped inlet whose serpentine channel moves brackish water in both directions.

Turning, I scan the dunes for potential confrontation, lean forward and begin the return. Conscious of my form, I open and close my hands, roll my shoulders, and make arcs with my arms. When my feet grow weary, heels again contacting sand, I emphasize the arc of my legs, draw knees higher, and increase my gate.

After the water crossing I am but several hundred meters from the bath house. More surfers have arrived. Instructors in pink and blue shirts over wet suits lead students to beach-side instruction. Lying on their belly they practice strokes.

I learn forward to pick up my pace, nearly double what was. Two hundred meters later I shift to my highest gear, pumping arms at my sides with knife blade hands slicing air. Bare feet force water to spray which soaks my shorts and lower shirt. Tender skin warms on the bottom of my feet. My lungs are pleased to meet the challenge and inhale larger, rhythmic volumes of moist atmosphere. My concerns for the day vanish as I am momentarily given the freedom of flight.

As the water moves from left to right, forward and back, the apparent speed at which I fly doubles then stalls and resumes.

Homeless men and women who have just finished bathing stop to look as I drop back to a jog just shy of their morning, temprary abode. I consider the luxury I have in my health and time to afford such a thing, knowing a warm shower awaits me behind locked door, key, and dry room.

1) Exercise for at least 30 minutes each morning. This induces an increased metabolism, oxygenation of blood, focus and creative output for up to four hours.

2) Drink (a lot of) water, juice, or tea. Low sugar content. No caffeine if you can help it.

3) Have within your reach, readily available, low-calorie snack foods you can eat all day (unflavored popcorn, low-carb crackers (digestives), grapes, apple slices, etc.).

4) Turn off Facebook, Twitter, and email. Work off-line as much as possible. Sketch with a pen or pencil as much as your work will allow. Experiment with various forms of music to learn which ones support reading, research, writing, math, art, and organization / composition / publication.

5) Get up and move every 20-30 minutes. Walk around the room. Look out the window. Run a flight of stairs–unless you are in a really good grove–then keep going!

6) Switch locations when all focus is gone. Find a couch and curl up with your laptop. Head to a cafe. Sit on the beach with your notebook. Anything to bring a positive outlook back to your work paradigm.

7) If frustration / anger enter the game, do physical exercise which invokes limited pain to relieve the angst: yoga stretches, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups on door jams–until the frustration is simply worn out.

8) Choose from your list of tasks based upon how you feel, what looks interesting. If you force yourself to do something that does not feel right, chances are it will not get done no matter how hard you try. In the end, you’ll beat yourself up for not doing it, only adding to the downward spiral. Embrace what you can do, what your brilliant mind is capable of in that moment, and build patterns of self-praise in order to build capacity for total, quality, creative output and subsequent joy.

9) Choose activities after work / outside of school which support a strong, focused start the next day. Each and every day is just too damn important to waste a single morning, afternoon or night not fully engaged. Personally, no social activity is worth the loss of even an hour of the next day for that could be THE day in which I write my best poem or make a cognitive leap toward the end goal of my research … or invent something that truly helps humanity. Why take the risk that I may miss that opportunity?

10) Give yourself permission to just walk away. It is sometimes better to not push through a period of total distraction or lack of focus, but to embrace that part of your day as available for something totally new. Go for a swim, a run, or to your favourite cafe. Go home early, take a hot bath, watch a movie, bake a batch of cookies or fresh bread. You’ll have a fresh start the next day, clean and clear and ready to dive in again.

Vitus: Vitus the Mad’s psycho-philosophical observation of the week: there are a plethora of zombie movies and tv series out now and more on the way. This genre may be popular because it is a sublimated expression of our fear that the thin veneer of civilization is about to be ripped off and reveal that humanity is a writhing mass of cruel idiots bent on consuming itself in apocaclyptic violence. Either that or it is more simply social programming by the ultra rich who are planning a depopulation crisis. I don’t watch scary movies much anymore.

Kai: I agree. The movies that came out of Japan following WWII about Godzilla, giant monsters from the deep, and heroes such as Inframan were a way of addressing the pain and fear of atomic weapons, and their impact on the Japanese culture at that time.

Daniel Dennett argues that most people don’t have a mind, let alone a soul and as such, are walking conglomerates of living tissue with only momentary true self-awareness, or for many, none at all.

Does not the majority of modern life mimic Zombie behaviour? Morning ’till night, routine without pause. A perpetual, frenzied effort to get things done that truly have no meaning. All of this compounded by a deep cultural pain through shootings in schools, movie theaters, and churches, wondering where and when it will strike next.

Yet, we continue to watch more and more violence on TV as violence increases in the real world. Perhaps we are the Zombies already, thriving on the living, undead without knowing.

Freedom is not something we can purchase,
nor give without willing receipt.
It is not found in wealth, nor time,
nor in the place in which we live.

Freedom is not the opportunity
to do whatever we desire.
It’s the way we move.
It’s the way we think.

Freedom is is not something found
in the casualties of war,
for it resides in the heart and mind
of those who choose to see.

Freedom is found in the brave,
the old, the youth, and the meek.

Freedom is found in you and me.

My father requested that I write a poem as his birthday gift this year.

Seventy three is but one more than seventy two.
We count the years as many, but for some they are few.

If you were a Red Wood tree, tall and lean,
you would be but a child, only beginning.

If you were a stone whose edges were made smooth,
your age would not be measured in years, but millennia.

If you were a galaxy, long arms gradually closing in,
the embrace of your center would require eternity.

But as a human, you are my father,
and I care not for these things.

Wisdom cannot be calculated nor can love be attributed to a clock, calendar, or the stars overhead. What I see when you turn from seventy two to three is one year more in which I have been blessed with a caring family.

I sit by the Mediterranean Sea
its waves pulling at the concrete barricade.
Whispers passed in white noise,
challenge stone and water to a duel.

The man-made form declares,
“I am solid, stable, and strong,
immovable by wind or water or time!”

The sea laughs as crest and foam,
each wave but one of a billion,
each wave rushing to shore.
Stone will erode to sand once more.

The edges are made visible,
the metal reinforcement exposed.
The corrosion of salt and air
already take their toll.

Hundreds of boats rise and fall.
Millions of tons lifted,
as though their mass was no more.

I sit by the Mediterranean Sea
its waves pulling at the concrete barricade.
Whispers passed in white noise …
but the victor is already known.

I am a latent flower chasing the sun in the final hours of summer.
I seek warmth which will not last long or may never come.
I expose my petals when I should close them for winter.
I risk vulnerability to be touched one last time.
I am a wild rose in a meadow of autumn clover.

In one motion you both held on and let go.

In one breath you said ‘forever’ but ‘not now’.

In one instance you understood my interior
but never made it to the core.