SALT AND FLICKERS
by Howie Goldklang ; illustrated by Eric Junker
Running isn’t just exercise but a profound spiritual discipline as well, according to this lavishly illustrated meditation.
Goldklang, a recreational runner and former track competitor, pens free-associative ruminations on running, framing the activity as an intensely physical pursuit that also connects us to the rhythms of the universe. His episodic, loose-limbed, meandering text includes many biographical snippets about significant historical runners from Pheidippides, the legendary ancient Greek whose sprint from Marathon to Athens inspired the modern race, to sub-four-minute-miler Roger Bannister and Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila, who won gold at the 1960 Rome Olympics running the marathon barefoot. He also discusses less obvious choices, like folk singer Woody Guthrie—who didn’t run but did go walking that ribbon of highway—and astronaut Neil Armstrong, whose pioneering moon-hop symbolizes “the longest distance ever run: from Earth to Awe.” Goldklang peppers the pages with stentorian, all-caps slogans that mix motivation with metaphysics: “SPEED AND TIME ARE SUBJECTIVE. EFFORT AND DETERMINATION ARE NOT. YOU ARE WORTHY OF THIS EFFORT.” He sprinkles in short poems and longer sections of prose, which include passages on the sweat glands, springy tendons, and other adaptations that enable the human body to run so well, along with an account of his stint at a Tennessee inpatient facility, where he grappled with the abuse he suffered in childhood.
By turns playful and effusive, Goldklang’s musings trot down many a winding trail of curious lore and self-knowledge. His poetry is raptly attuned to the visceral sensations of running (“Sweat hit my lips, / Tasted the Salt”), and his prose evokes the physical rush of athleticism, which he conveys in vivid, kinetic prose. (“I lifted off my hips and surged forward, moving with a power I didn’t know I had. The last 300 meters burned down in pure bliss. There was no pain, no struggle, just a wildfire of boundless energy.”) There’s a pronounced mysticism in his thinking that lifts the solitary runner into an oceanic oneness of all being: “Running is a way of being heard by the universe. Moving on her ground connects us with every past generation that left their energy.” At his best, the author unites the biological and the spiritual in a seamless whole, a vision that stays rooted in the reality of a psyche enmeshed in and nourished by the body. (“I flashed through the hundreds of times these feet toed a starting line and rocked full force into the first left turn. All that heat, all that burn, just to bring forth this lesson: Running saved me. Not because it fixed me, but because it gave my brokenness something to do.”) The illustrations by Los Angeles–based artist and muralist Junker feature bold planes of color and repeated motifs of birds and flowers, sun and moon. Athletes are sometimes depicted in the style of archaic Greek vase paintings, their bunched muscles and straining sinews traced in stark lines; at other times they are Picasso-like figures with doughy bodies, lurching poses, and flat, depthless profiles. Junker’s strong, iconic style makes for a striking visual accompaniment to Goldklang’s words.Luminous reflections on bodies and souls in motion that pair lyrical writing with vibrant images.