Blood on The Leaves

I think about how my life will be when I am 32 years-old. I think about how my Papa feels whenever I call him and catch him at the right time for a 15-minute conversation. I think about how a kid reacts when I redirect them after talking during an exam. I think about what would happen if I didn't leave you. I think about about how painful that needle is when it hits my skin after every tattoo.

I think about how my body feels since it's been over 2 months since it hasn't had some sort of alcohol in it. I think about you a lot. I think about holding my body weight directly over me in gym and how vulnerable I feel underneath it. I think about the two bites I take before swallowing a forkful of chicken pad thai.

I think about how Noname was feeling when she performed Bye Bye Baby and if she didn't mind if I cried singing along with her. I think about the endorphins that flood my body when I hear a Cameo song when I am lifting. I think about what that guy was wearing on his crotch in that one Cameo song. I think about how Astro & Snoopy feel after I run them every Saturday morning at Hilltop.

I think about how hard it has been for me to enunciate specific words since I was 7 and wonder if I should take more speech classes. I think about my old friend who committed suicide a month ago and wondered if I could have helped. I think about how wacky it must have first sounded when Kanye West mixed together "Strange Fruit" & "Down 4 My N*ggas".

I think about how Shanita feels when I send her obscure memes with no context. I think about much joy I feel when I post a new dance video. I think about the people I blocked in my life because they made me feel like rotten two-week leftovers. I think about the 180 kids I left in Norfolk and if they ever think about me. I think about how Christmas lights look on my skin as I wrap myself in a fleece blanket and pass out on the carpet.

I think about how much I love running in the city and weaving through black figures and illuminated posts. I think about you and me and leaving behind the mundane life of a stable 25 year-old. I think about the people I instinctively hug or call after a run or if I get off of work. I think about how rooted I feel when I flow through triangle series in a Vinyasa flow.


And when I think about everything and the mind gets flooded...

"Blood on the Leaves" by Kanye West has always had a special place in my heart.

So Many Details

I'm standing on a street corner off of Colorado & MLK Boulevard, waiting to meet up with a new friend to go a night jog. My legs do a light jig to stay warm in an early 40s wind chill, moving to the rhythm of a Toro y Moi tune. I have on my Norfolk State dri fit shirt, running shorts, and backward baseball cap completed with a worn pair of Newtons. The circle emblem on my wireless headphones flash a dim blue symbol, representing I am locked into some "phat beats".

To a regular mayo Denver resident, I am a crackhead having a seizure on a corner looking to buy some contraband. But if by contraband one means "friendship" well lock me up with TayK-47. I have been living in the Denver metro area for about a year-and-some-change and have been lacking on making friends. Or one may say "crack-a-lackin". I snicker to myself as I start on dynamic leg movements. Maybe it's my aggressive friend invitation initiation or reluctance to meet new people in a conceived squad or tired from the tirade of being a teacher from a work week, thoughts running through my head as I hit baby lunges.

It is 4:30, and I've been waiting on this corner for what it must have been 45 minutes. Or 3 minutes. Either way the sun transitions to cover and my shiny black-boy legs reflect the illuminated street lights. My phone vibrates and I quickly delete the "flakiness" that I have almost become accustomed to millennials.

It sucks that I have begun the trend as; the "oh let this person be on standby in case something else comes up" and I miss the commitment of pre-internet. If I didn't show up to my friend's house in 2006, one may assume I am as good as dead.

I wonder if I could have handled more than 4 or 5 friends at one time. In middle school, high school, college, post-undergrad; I typically had 2 good friends, 2 or more back up friends, and a dirty dozen of associates. If one died then at least there was one to support afterwards. Like Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy. What a formidable squad, as I check my phone for the 10th time in 3 minutes to see if this potential best-friend-forever will pop-up. We met at a coffee shop about a week prior, so I assumed it was meant to last until we were 90 year-olds playing Gamecast like it never went out of style.

My hands are starting to lock up, I reckon it is time to go if I am going to protect my recently moisturized kneecaps from turning into dust. I queue up my favorite Toro y Moi album Anything In Return and start a route over the flashing lights off of the Boulevard.

The song "So Many Details" brings nostalgia to my mind, as it connected me to one of my best/worst best friends of all time.

I Will Find Him

When I was 19 years-old, I saw the film Man of Steel 3 times in less than 18 hours.

I walked into the Plaza Cinema in Grenada, Mississippi at 3 separate times between the dates of June 14th and June 15th in 2013 and bought 3 seperate tickets. 3 separate times I saw the same story with the same actors playing the same characters in the same scenes fighting the same people with the same beginning and the same ending on 3 separate occasions.

Could you imagine being that obsessed, champing at the bit, to see something that you have seen numerous times? Desperate to catch a small, subtle detail that may seemingly take your breath away?
With the sense that you are actually being pried out of your seat, pulled into something that you believe to be 100%  true until the credit scenes roll? To see your own soul leave your own meat vessel and be enamored with being those characters, those fictional character whom seem like a deity?

No offense to the Guardians of "OA" but when I flow through Sun B salutations on my yoga mat or when I am running off Broadway in between cocaine-filled yuppies or if I am tossing weights doing renegade rows in Planet Fitness, I feel like I can't die. Ask my overzealous tail when I was 22 running through the hoods of Portsmouth, Virginia like I had a 757 VIP card. Those peppy neurochemicals stretch throughout my entire body in every muscle fiber, every nerve ending, every chakra that my body can fathom.

This may appear overwhelming, and it is most of time. The feeling of ecstasy that flows through my body 90% of the time when I exercise gets to me. At this point the pain I feel when I am bopping my legs in floorwipers is needed to relax me. I can't go to sleep unless I am sore most days

It is like lifting is the entree, running completes the sides, and yoga is the lukewarm water that washes of all it down. We would call music the seasoning for this soul food meal. I could eat all of this without salt and pepper, but why would I?

The workout below is entitled Boris Diaw and is to be done in 50 minutes. If you are not able to do this in 50 minutes, stop, and try again later. This is made purely from Man of Steel OST after I saw it for the 3rd time on June 15th, 2013.

Boris Diaw 

• Centipede Push-ups 4 x 20
• Wide-grip overhand pull-ups 4 x 10
• Battle Ropes 4y x 30 sec. per.

• Alternating waves (small)
• In & our waves 
• Giddy-Up Horsey Waves 
• Power Slams
• Alternating waves (large)

• Alternating lunges w/ dumbbell (front, back, and oblique) 4 x 4
• Kettlebell swings 4 x 15
• One-armed Romanian deadlift to overhead press w/ dumbbell 4 x 8 (each side)
• Floorwipers with barbell (300 movie style) 4 x 10 (each side)
• Alternating Dumbbell rows w/ push-ups 4 x 8 (each side)
• Dips 4 x 8
• Single-arm dumbbell bench press (on floor mat) 4 x 10 (each side)
• Push-up burpees 4 x*
• However long it takes you to regret eating a whole freggin' pizza in one sitting

"I Will Find Him" is a track off of Hans Zimmer's Man of Steel original soundtrack and remains the only song that makes me want to run into a brick wall head first. This is one of my favorite quotes from my favorite superhero movie of all time.

Gentrified Cornbread

It's 3:18 pm and I am sitting in a coffee shop. I used to say coffee is the devil's nectar but here I am sipping on a venti caramel frappuccino with a dose of espresso. It is not called 'express-o' don't worry, I checked.

So as you can see, I reopened my blog (again) with ultimate hopes of "chillin' tf out" during this next school quarter and updating folks on why I love physical fitness and how it connects to my overall Jonny spirit. 

This is not a "how-to-guide" on how I balance teaching yoga, running dogs, and the high-and-lows of being a 3rd year teacher as well, as I do my own fitness practices. This is just how a Jonny boy does it and yes, these things may nest its way into my blog.

I will be blindly optimistic, vent, rant, praise, throw up, eat the throw it back up again,.I will sing, dance, yell, laugh and I will do it by making paragraphs 2-5 sentences in a palpable (that's for you JW.)

I think highly of myself (even as far as calling myself J.O.D.Y. = Jon of Da Year) but I know how much life can suck and I know how blessings just fall on top of head while I ignore them because I am still cursing on why life sucks. 

But there is so much to the little things of life that are so important: like getting a good crack-of-the-neck, kids who try to race me on my 5-milers off Colfax, that guy in Planet Fitness that falsely told me I look like Terry Crews. 

Oh geez, I keep telling y'all what this blog is about to be about and what 'imma do' and la-di-da. Wait well let me get one more attempt in,

This blog is about all of the things in life that make me happy, make me sad, make me tired, make me glad; this blog is about how I ran a 5k in 17:12 while I was hungover from 2 40s and a few shots of moonshine; this blog is about how kicked a lady in a face while I was demonstrating a headstand; it is about my 5th grade P.E. teacher who called a 9 year-old with a fragile psyche fat; it is about my mom's cornbread that had a little too much butter in it that had to be gentrified by using olive oil & basil leaves. 

Welcome to Gentrified Cornbread.

Running Man Challenge

Apologies on how sporadic I am at maintaining a blog. Haven't had a functioning laptop in a while. I could also note other numerous excuses, but for now I am just going to dive into the recent running activities.

I ran the Richmond Anthem Marathon this past November, 46-seconds under sub-4:00. First and probably only time running with headphones on. To say 26.2 miles showed me the 'gas face' would be an understatement. After being almost two minutes late to the actual race, I reached a hiccup during the run. 

I despise running over 10 miles. Oops.

Only running 20 miles twice in my life and expecting to qualify for the Boston Marathon off of that may have been a potential problem. This thought first occurred as I gobbled down multi-flavored gels like it was some chicken pad thai I bought with a Groupon. It's as though my body knew I had only ran a certain amount of mileage. So besides getting my third I mean thirteen wind, besides producing all that lactic acid, besides summoning Chief Keef to get my body through this self-inflicted pain, it hit me. No, I mean it literally hit me.

 

First in the inner quads then outer quads then calves and then feet and then stomach. The unsolicited cramps, ouchie. My body told me it was time to go home, but my ego said only a tiny, little, 10k left. Then we can go home and buy more pasta off of Groupon. I ran to about the half marathon mark at 7:30 pace, finished the race at a 9:30 pace. I hit every 'Power-up' button poster, every candy joint, every high five from toddlers; I would have summoned Shenron if Krillin was running with me. 

Despite my ill-preparedness for yet another RVA-based race, the vistas surrounding the James River looked as though they were forged from The Joy of Painting. The mild gusts of wind carried the water down the stream, making its way down and through Belle Isle. The roads and back-roads took runners through the West End, which I never went to as a child. They had me thinking about moving back one day. Homes and houses caught my eye, distracting me from the eventual ensuing pain I would have a mile 20.

An old lady (I only say she was old because she told me she was 75) caught me at 23 miles. She said "woop-woop, woop woop woop, woop woop woop, woopity, I'm 75, keep woop-woop-wooping," because I could only hear her through the pauses in a Solange melody. My old 7th grade gym teacher was there, giving out medals. Still had the same goofy smile and frizzy hair, dabbed with a little bit of gray. She was nice to me. At mile 9, a young man had Domino's and beer for each person willing to sacrifice pit-stop time. I hung out there for about 5-minutes before I realized I still had to finish a race. 

And as I crossed the finished line after whizzing by Grace, Broad, and Cary Street while running like I had a penny stuck in my arse because of leg cramps, I thought only one deafening notion as I walked back to my Honda.

"Only 54 minutes to shave off my time... I'm going to have to try again next year for Boston Qualifier, don't I?"

Port-O-John

From the endless red clay dirt trails of Rock Hawk in Eatonton to the endless cement patches of Ghent in Norfolk.


From watching the sun peak over loblolly pines to watching the sun hover over the ocean.

From running at 5 am with no one out-and-about to running at 5 am with the people already through half their day.

Deer prancing around low shrubbery vs. crackheads weaving in and out of corner stores.

From Bartram Forest to Mount Trashmore.

From Milledgeville, Georgia to Portsmouth, Virginia.

Something is to be said about running in cities versus running in the forest. I’m 23 and unemployed, so obviously I know what I speak of.

I’ve been residing in the Hampton Roads for a few months now. I feel fairly acclimated to the 757 (which nobody besides newbies call it that) which is comprised of the P-town, Virginia Beach, Hampton, Norfolk (where I spend most of my exploring), Chesapeake, Newport News, and Suffolk (it seems no one cares much for Suffolk) with a few other cities sprinkled in. While almost two million people live in a density of 3,300/square mile, the area I’ve spent for the past few years running in Georgia has a density of 177/sq. mi. in almost the area. SO odds are I’ll see some young jock once-in-a-while.

The reason these statistics are brought up, which I didn’t use Wikipedia as a reference, is the space Jonny long-legs can spread his strides.  In middle Georgia as long as it wasn’t “open season,” I wouldn’t be accidentally shot on one of the gravel trails I would meander on most mornings. But I haven't learned this city well enough. It's intimidating; it's not an place people are used to seeing other people running. I'm not in the nice suburbs where you see a band of stay-at-home moms walking alongside freshly cut Kentucky bluegrass. This lesson was learned abruptly when I first moved here:

It was 5 am and Ellie Goulding was blaring in my Bluetooth wirelesses. My routes included anything that was well-lit and that was only a neighborhood that was recently built up around a recently built up golf course that was across from a recently built up community college that was recently built up across a bus station. I could get a few miles out there but wanted to venture out, naturally as a runner and grand voyager.

The decision was made to take a left instead of a right, and I was out of my comfort running zone (yay!). But that’s not the end of what happened (boo!). My eyes connected with glimmering lamp posts that sputtered out the remaining watts it was trying to sustain. Familiar sights of ’79 Coupes sitting on 24s with candy paint with the butterfly doors and run-down shacks somehow kept me at ease. These places I ran around in Milledgeville but the area was so small that I knew people, at least people who know the person I knew. I used to pick of trash once once a weekend around the area. There were only about 18,000 people there. There was 100,000 people here. And they don’t know me. Doubt they would want me to do a community trash clean-up.

What would expect with a man the size of a hybrid running at you in the dark?

I think I got maybe a quarter of the mile off from my route. Ellie Goulding still belting out lyrics. My feet approached a fellow who resembled Redman in his prime. I began to cross the boulevard about 1,000 of my size 14 Aasics away from him, as not to startle the sir. I reckon he had heard my steady breathing and made an brash 180 degree turn; with one hand in the air pointing at me, with one hand grabbing towards his waist, which was somewhere around his mid-thigh apparently. I did a 180 myself and went back home, not looking to even try and see what he was trying to fiddle with down there. Similar to when I ran to close to that skunk off Bartram. Right?

Okay, lesson learned. Back home to try again tomorrow morning.

Side note: Look for construction equipment on long runs to use the bathroom. There's normally an unlocked port-o-potty. I'm sure they don't mind.

Dance Party on a Tuesday Morning

Recently I moved out of my parent's Richmond home and relocated to the port city of Portsmouth. Haven't posted much in the past month due to this transition. There's something about moving out of your parent's home and beginning a new job in a new city with crippling student loans that will keep a Jon on edge.

BUT

Of course there are the runs (not those runs) that keep my emotions and thoughts stable as I began my adult life $58,000 in debt. I live in a nice neighborhood; my landlords cook me dinner every once in a while. Charted out a nice route to run before work (4:30 am cardio sessions are a bit of an adjustment) which leaves me passed out by 8 or 9 at night. Been running about 25+ miles/week along with upping my weight training back to 3 times a week. My fitness goals goals right now is to get down to 195 FOREVER. Maybe getting in a marathon by November. Knowing that my mom's showstopper meals will help me keep off the pounds.

Source: giphy

There's the subject of running and exercise that I talk about when it comes to being me staying mentally and physically complete. But without positive/distract(ive) reinforcement of music, I wouldn't be able to get far. As stated earlier, I run based off those feelings of uncertainty. Morning before a big final? Run. Stepping back into a state of depression? Run. About to ask a Nubian Princess out? Run. Evening before a new DC/Marvel movie coming out that has mixed reviews? Run. Just had a bad race? RUN! My anxiety levels peak over the simplest of tasks, and the little things I do can counteract those negative aspects go a long way.

How does an emotional bastard even get up before an exam go for a 45-minute run? Wouldn't that add more frustration? What's the incentive? For one, Running groups are great for people. Finding a good paced group and hanging out with new people while discussing a whole spectrum of topics is great.. Unfortunately for me I'm in a weird spot. I'm not exactly a casual runner but I'm not align with someone who does a marathon in 2:30 hours. I also only run before or after the sun sets due to strict personal preference. That's where the beats, rhythms, and rhymes come in.

My running playlist is as highly maintained as my running shoes. I'm constantly swapping out songs weekly and painstakingly on the hunt for good songs. Some people listen to audiobooks on racial diversity or listen to scientific journals or informative podcasts. Most people listen to upbeat or energetic songs that keep them at a certain rate of intensity during a workout. The emotion may be empowering or techno-y. I definitely have that type of music on my playlist, but I have a mix of emotions. Songs can be menacing and Debby-downers or songs can match the intensity of a RATM mosh pit. A song I can listen to that makes me cry over a romantic movie soundtrack can as easily be in my playlist as a song by The Black Eyed Peas. The common theme is tempo. Whether it's half-time or full-time; that beat has to be in alignment with my stride. In addition ot has to grab my emotions and I need my imagination to capture the song. I need to be consumed by it or the song has to be scrapped. It's not a technical as it seems. Here's an explanation of my current top 4 running songs.

Get Away

The Internet
A break-up song about a couple who want to go on a trip but their relationship is too turbulent to even leave the house together. This neosoul-indie mixed with R&B-infused group is backed by a persistent bass that keeps my running tempo high. The guitar melody gently covers the singer's voice that keeps a serene atmosphere.

My emotion: Relaxed. It feels as though I go back-and-forth between drinking warm milk and vibing out in a small club with a few close friends.

They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)

Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
This early '90s hip-hop group samples some jazz using a saxophone and upright bass that helps the rapper effortlessly spit lyrics about past family members and friends. It reminds me of why hip-hop is my favorite genre, as I am fully invested in hearing this story I've heard over thousands of times over the past two decades.

My emotion: Nostalgic. The song came out around the time I was born. A lot of my earliest memories come from hearing this played in the background of my initial thoughts as a toddler. 

Paint It Black
The Rolling Stones

This song hits me right in the face whenever it plays. It overwhelms with this psychedelic, almost melancholy feeling. But with enough aggressiveness to where if I was at a funeral, I would immediately want to kick the ass of the person who murdered a loved one. Even if cancer killed them. I normally have no business listening to '60s rock music, but this song aligns right into a mood I rarely try to feel. Which is...

My emotion: Anger. This song puts me in delightfully angry mood. It's as though I'm warming up my car to go to work. But I drive a 1968 Plymouth Road Runner Hemi. And I need the avenge the death of my father. (He's still alive right now but just saying)

Radio Ladio

Metronomy
This indie-electronic band is one of the few bands I keep up with on a regular basis. During a time I despised the existence of electronic music, this group combined the up-tempo rhythm with a repetitive but ever-changing-melody. It's hard to explain, due to the fact I lose my mind every time it pops up.

My emotion: Enthusiastic. I first heard this song on a video game and instantly begin irritating like a inebriated barista. 

source: lolworthy

Thanks for reading! Share if you would like. Here's the URL of my everchanging playlist on Spotify. Or you can search it. It's called Loretta Devine.

https://open.spotify.com/user/1216617677/playlist/2giHCRxBZbSxeipvcGqBGB