Running Blind

I love to run. I am a lover of rising, lurching, flailing, falling and all the while breathing in a rhythm at once simple and dangerously complicated. I look for new ways and new places to run not so much to break out of a rut but to test this graceful chaos under experimental conditions. I once ran through a pitch-black November night with a headlamp, headphones, and layer upon layer of polyester and neoprene, none of which insulated me from the wet, cold air. I found myself so away from my ability to listen to all the things my body was doing that I was unable to coordinate any of them and suddenly my limbs and lungs were playing on different teams, with my equilibrium the loser. I’ve run in 8 degree February and 99 degree July and in both cases wondered quite literally if I would live to remember the event.

I am a runner. When I run, my skin is alive, within and without. The feeling of my body swimming and punching through the air makes for a most visceral sensation; my eyes, ears and nose taking a back seat and finding themselves necessary for only the most utilitarian of applications, such as when to ignore the signs and voices instructing - if not imploring – me to turn. My feet become soft, intelligent landing pads that tell my legs to absorb the shock created by my repeated attempts at flight failing over and over again.

I run indoors, I run outdoors. I run in the morning, I run in the day, I run at night. I run in snow, sunshine, rain, wind, hail and if fire came into my path, I would run through it, too.
Most of all, I remember why I run.

It is the breath and the muscle and the way that even the most initially uninspired effort is quickly and consistently rewarded with that feeling of life. It transcends question, faith, chance and all else for me. It is proof once and for all that life likes to be loved, caressed, appreciated, and experienced.
I run indoors quite often. While many see a man running in place with an ignored TV in front of him, what they miss is that which is in the man and the area immediately around him. There is his blood, then his skin, then his sweat, then and inch of pure heat and then an invisible shield of absolute joy. It’s this last part that instantly turns even the most mundane of surroundings - such as a rubber floor, a television and fluorescent lighting – into the man’s perfect world.
There’s a fellow runner I see at the gym fairly often and if it’s anything other than raining outside and I’m inside, he wags his finger and gives me a “tsk, tsk…” look, or just shrugs and gives me a “what the heck?” mostly in good fun, however partly unmistakably not. To him, it’s as if I’m giving Mother Nature the bird, or taking the beauty of the road or trail for granted. He doesn’t know that I’m in a bubble every time out (or in as it were.) He doesn’t understand that while, in the end, I will always take sunshine over fluorescent tubes, fresh air over gym mold, and tar over treadmill rubber, that such a process of decision comes so far in second place that it is rendered nearly irrelevant. Firstly, I just love to run. After all, I am a runner.

Snoopy Made Me Do It

(Originally published in Cape Cod Community College’s ‘The MainSheet’ 2/11/06)

“Newsflash: Thousands of Muslims stormed and set fire to the Danish Embassy in Beirut after a newspaper in Denmark published cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. One person was killed in the attack.” –AP Wire

I can’t remember the last time I was so moved by a cartoon that I burned down an embassy. I mean, really, that’s just crazy. In the heady early 90’s, I knew in my heart that if those rascals Ren and Stimpy wished for me to send a stack of signed, blank checks to the playroom at a rehabilitation facility for problem gamblers and narcotics addicts, I’d do it without a second thought. Even so, I must ask myself, could a cartoon get me to do something violent? Something so without conscience? Something so against the very religion I adhere to that a desire to maim and kill others would undoubtedly have to be motivated by some total lack of identity and apathetic participation in mob rule? Maybe, but that might call for the command of God (Tex Avery) himself.
I mean, I can’t tell you how many times that Hagar the Horrible made me want to get off the couch and go beat up a Viking, but I maintained my sense of tolerance and civility. If the Road Runner gets your blood boiling the way he/she/it does mine, well then you know what I’m talking about (“Beep-beep, my ass...)

Fortunately, I’m an adult now. I like to think that no matter how angry I get at people that poke fun at even the things I hold most dear (i.e. someone badmouthing Jimmy Buffet… oh wait that’s me that badmouths Jimmy Buffet) that I can still find a way to pile it on - I mean, take it - with a grain of salt (and no, not on my margarita, thank you) and/or a rational retort.
If an offensive image appeared on television, it might be appropriate to write a letter to or call the station and voice your anger, I mean really voice it, like, in place of prepositions, use profanity. If it appeared in a newspaper, write a letter to the editor or stop by her office and bang on the window ceaselessly for, oh I don’t know, four or five hours, preferably on a Friday. But really, firebombs? Because something that was drawn in a format intended to entertain children (or at the very least appeal to the child-like perceptive qualities of our oh-so-adult brains) made you mad? Aww, poor baby. Maybe baby wants to get a real idea of the parts about compassion and peace in his Koran? Does that make baby feel better? Aww, that makes baby think for himself. Aww, baby’s brain hurts. Poor baby. Poor grown up baby.
I make this distinction because real babies - the ones who have only been of this earth for a matter of months - are nearly perfect; their only flaw being their need to make a heck of a lot of noise and throw things when they don’t get what they want. The other babies are different, in decidedly more dangerous ways.
These babies are everywhere it seems. Babies in the U.S. who bomb abortion clinics or show up at the funerals of people who died of AIDS with signs that read “God Hates Fags.” There are babies that go on national television to say that the hurricane that devastated an entire city and killed thousands of people was resultant of God’s anger with said city for its unholy ways. Babies are everywhere. The only problem is that many of them weigh upwards of 160 pounds, which would seem to indicate adulthood (or way too much formula.) Unfortunately, such maturity is not necessarily present. But since they’re so big, they have the ability to hurt other people, often as a result of not using their itty bitty baby brains to think beyond “cartoon make me mad, me kill cartoon-maker, me still like Danish cheese, me conflicted…”
Real babies, who could care less about their origins because they are perfectly contented little Buddhas, grow into children who ask “where did I come from?” who turn into teenagers who ask “Can you get high by smoking banana peels?” who become adults that realize “No, you can’t” It’s that simple.
Oh yeah, somewhere along the line, most people get an answer to the question they asked when they were children. The answer is rarely definitive, sometimes beautiful, and only a precursor for violence if the person asking hasn’t gotten it yet that you do something other than go crazy when something doesn’t go according to your (or your god’s) plan. Grow up, babies, and have some #@$%&! Havarti.