Remembering the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre:
Frédéric Boisseau, Franck Brinsolaro, Jean Cabut, Elsa Cayat, Stéphane Charbonnier, Philippe Honoré, Bernard Maris, Ahmed Merabet, Mustapha Ourrad, Michel Renaud, Bernard Verlhac (Tignous), Georges Wolinski.
While I was walking up the stairs, though, all of a sudden I thought I was going to puke again. Only, I didn’t. I sat down for a second, and then I felt better. But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody’d written “Fuck you” on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them – all cockeyed, naturally – what it meant, and how they’d all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever’d written it I figured it was some perverty bum that’d sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I’d smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody. But I knew, too, I wouldn’t have the guts to do it. That made me even more depressed. I hardly had the guts to rub it off the wall with my hand, if you want to know the truth. I was afraid some teacher would catch me rubbing it off and would think I’d written it. But I rubbed it out anyway, finally.
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I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another “Fuck you” on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn’t come off. It’s hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the “Fuck you” signs in the world. It’s impossible.
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I was the only one left in the tomb then. I sort of like it, in a way. It was so nice and peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, you’d never guess what I saw on the wall. Another “Fuck you.” It was written with a read crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones.
That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it’ll say “Holden Caulfield” on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it’ll say “Fuck you.” I’m positive, in fact.
Holden Caulfield in “The Catcher in the Rye,” Chapter 25
Here are some photos from the Boulder Beast trail race in Lock Haven, PA (September 22, 2018).
Traversing the boulder field was great fun and not as easy as one might expect. It’s a lot more significant in person than it appears to be from a distance. I wish I had taken more photos, especially through the middle section of the race. But that’s the section where I could only focus on moving ahead to get to the end. I was under prepared, overweight, and running with spasms in my quads most of the way, except, of course, when I was going up those long steep hills, stopping to lean on trees every 10 yards. There was no running then, only spasms.
On one of those hills between mile 11 and 16, I swore to myself this would be the one and only time I did this race. I doubled up on the swearing that night as my legs seized over and over. But as I spotted Rote Overlook high up on the mountain as I headed back to New Jersey on I-80 the next day, I recalled how stunning that view was and I began to miss that course already. Yes, it was damn hard. Yes, I was fairly miserable for long stretches. So what?
Now I have a new goal: get back to Lock Haven next September and do better!
By the way, the first 3 miles of the course are on paved roads, hence the title of this post.