Thursday, October 19, 2006

The Staggering Despair and Limitless Hope of the Future –or- A More Accurate Title Might Be "Run!" or "Lost!" or even "Drip!"


His knees were cold. Yes, this was a new sensation. It wasn’t just the knee as a general area that was cold either, it was the tops of his knees (“tops” of his knees might not be the most accurate description, unless he was reclining, making his kneecaps point skyward). No, it was not the “tops” of his knees feeling this new and extreme sensation of cold, but rather the front-most portion of his knee. The cold felt conical, the wide base of dull cold beginning just behind his kneecap and coming to a sharp point of freezing sensation just to the left of his one out-of-place knee hair.

He shouldn’t have worn shorts. It should have been sweat pants today. He knew that. He had known that when he selected the shorts from the drawer (which might more accurately be called the floor of his closet) and when he had slid the said shorts up his legs and over his buttocks. But shorts are what you wear when you run, right? In all his experience of fitness practices in Texas, shorts seem to have been the one consistent norm. What was done was done at this point, and his knees were freezing, and he had no explanation as to why it was mainly his knees that were so cold.

His knees were cold, his body stung, he was breathing heavily enough to hear puffs of air escape from his ear drums, a clear, liquefied mucus substance was draining from his nose, and he was decidedly lost.

He did not know where he was.

He did not know where he was going.

This is not the predicament that he had set out for. His original plan had something to do with fitness of the body. He had some grand ideas of music playing in his ears and ground springing under his feet and air expelling from his lungs in puffs of condensation in some kind of grand bodily-kinesthetic/spiritual experience.

The reality of the situation was different. He had bodily-kinesthetic/spiritual-experienced himself right out of the places and trails he’d known. And now he was far from where he’d thought he would be and lost.

Being lost makes you feel like a complete dumbass.

He looked around pensively over the treetops for some familiar landmark. His eyes find one in the last 25 degrees of his full turn and he now knows how lost he is. He is far from everything he knows and everything he knows is not where he thought it would be.

This is the part where narrative can get interesting.

This is the part where he starts to run.

Despite the chill in his chest and on his knees. Despite the ache of his body and burn in his lungs. Despite the lazy drain of fluids from his nose. He runs.

He wants to close his eyes. But you cannot run with your eyes closed. He focuses on the ground just before his feet. He does not want to fall.

And now you will play a part. Like the choose-your-own-adventure books of your childhood, you can project your own desires for him. Where is it that he is running? Does he begin his run back towards what he knows, or away from it? Does he stop? What awaits him just beyond where his eyes scan the ground?

We want our own narratives to drip with “purpose” and “meaning” and even some grand “spiritual experience,” yet we are surprised to find that when we look above the tops of the trees, we are decidedly lost. All we have is the ground beneath our feet and at best some vague landmarks of the past to orient us. We often have been running too far for too long. We often have grown tired of the run we set out on, and find we are ill-equipped. We find out that even our knees can feel the sting of cold.

But what we are least prepared for is that we find ourselves still running.

Run.

Despite the situations that surround you. Despite the pain, the cold, the weariness, or the constant drip; run.

(As an alternate to reading this blog, you could just listen to the instrumental soundtrack to the movie Firday Night Lights by Explosions in the Sky. Try the following songs: "Your Hand in Mine," "Our Last Days As Children," "An Ugly Fact of Life," "Home," "To West Texas," "Inside It All Feels The Same," "Lonely Train," "A Slow Dance," and "The Sky Above, The Field Below." Seriously, listen to it.)