Tense, it is. Tense.
It has become late again. Evening already. Time playing with me, surprising me by its passing. A day between the breaking and the beginning of the fast, and me bemused by it as always.
My legs hurt. I went running earlier. I went further than I usually do, further than I had intended. That's the only way I can really get anywhere - I must trick myself, pretend I'm just going a little way, and then not hold to my word. I tell myself I'll stop and stroll soon... just not right now. Soon. And I just keep telling myself that. Soon. Soon. The laziest possible approach to exercise, harnessing my limitless powers of procrastination to run when I'd rather meander. It's disconcerting how easily I fall for my own duplicity.
I am frustrated by how weak-willed I am. I love having run a long way or swum hard. But I love it only in retrospect. After the run, the run was fantastic, during it it's a tiresome slog in which all my body parts argue with the rest. During the run I'm a sufferer battling, dragging every stride unwillingly from my whinging body. But after the run, it was oh gee just fantastic thanks great to be out lovely in the woods fresh air feel alive body and mind and all.
It's striking how discrepant things can be made by shifting the tense of the verb. I can't stand running, I love to have run.
It's not always the same. Sometimes even afterwards I feel like an ageing hound that got a fright and ran away from a cat. I drag my heels into the shower, feeling my decrepit body slowly rattling toward malfunction and decay. And sometimes I feel euphoric, floating through the apartment on pneumatic pistons. I slap together a hearty meal and launch myself with gusto into the next day of the rest of my life.
The last few times I've been out the weather has been odd. A few days ago I set off under blue cloud-less sky, and was soaked to the skin 15 minutes later, then drying out in brilliant sunshine, then running through hail. I went through two or three rinse dry cycles before I dripped home.
I look like a nutter when I'm out. I don't intend to, I just forget to think about things like what I'm wearing. A few days ago, running past a café full of fuzzy whites I unzipped my pullover to cool down. A few minutes later I realised that I had George Kastanza posing seductively across my chest. And I was wearing all white, because that's what I have that I can go running in. I don't own running clothes. I'm not a runner. I just go running sometimes, randomly, inappropriately dressed.
The rain had plastered my linen pants to my skinny legs, the wet fabric transparent, my pale pink skin showing through. Must have looked like an inverted X-ray image escaped from a doctor's drawer and bounding away through the mud.
The rain poured over the land and I ran through the rain. I took my glasses off, and I was more in the world, and less in my head. Less of a boundary between the me and the not-me. I spend more and more time in my head, recently. More time musing over what I am, what I can do, less time being and doing.
The quagmire of introspection as incorrect conjugation.
So I run to conjugate my life differently, to shift the tense of the verb.
I run to get out of my head. I run so that I don't have to decide whether to shower first or have breakfast or whether I should sit down and work on code or write a letter or perhaps first clear up the books on my floor and the piles of newspapers that I must get around to reading. I stand in the middle of my room immobilised with unlimited possibilities and then I grab myself inside and shake my hunched mental shoulders and throw myself out the door just to do something.
Otherwise I'd just dissolve into the carpet. I'd sit in front of the computer all day, leg shaking, brow creased, and slowly I'd just grow flaccid, and then indistinct, lose substance, and sometime they'll come in and find no-one there, just carpet and a mound of newspapers and a blinking cursor. Where I am, was I no more.
My legs hurt. I went running earlier. I went further than I usually do, further than I had intended. That's the only way I can really get anywhere - I must trick myself, pretend I'm just going a little way, and then not hold to my word. I tell myself I'll stop and stroll soon... just not right now. Soon. And I just keep telling myself that. Soon. Soon. The laziest possible approach to exercise, harnessing my limitless powers of procrastination to run when I'd rather meander. It's disconcerting how easily I fall for my own duplicity.
I am frustrated by how weak-willed I am. I love having run a long way or swum hard. But I love it only in retrospect. After the run, the run was fantastic, during it it's a tiresome slog in which all my body parts argue with the rest. During the run I'm a sufferer battling, dragging every stride unwillingly from my whinging body. But after the run, it was oh gee just fantastic thanks great to be out lovely in the woods fresh air feel alive body and mind and all.
It's striking how discrepant things can be made by shifting the tense of the verb. I can't stand running, I love to have run.
It's not always the same. Sometimes even afterwards I feel like an ageing hound that got a fright and ran away from a cat. I drag my heels into the shower, feeling my decrepit body slowly rattling toward malfunction and decay. And sometimes I feel euphoric, floating through the apartment on pneumatic pistons. I slap together a hearty meal and launch myself with gusto into the next day of the rest of my life.
The last few times I've been out the weather has been odd. A few days ago I set off under blue cloud-less sky, and was soaked to the skin 15 minutes later, then drying out in brilliant sunshine, then running through hail. I went through two or three rinse dry cycles before I dripped home.
I look like a nutter when I'm out. I don't intend to, I just forget to think about things like what I'm wearing. A few days ago, running past a café full of fuzzy whites I unzipped my pullover to cool down. A few minutes later I realised that I had George Kastanza posing seductively across my chest. And I was wearing all white, because that's what I have that I can go running in. I don't own running clothes. I'm not a runner. I just go running sometimes, randomly, inappropriately dressed.
The rain had plastered my linen pants to my skinny legs, the wet fabric transparent, my pale pink skin showing through. Must have looked like an inverted X-ray image escaped from a doctor's drawer and bounding away through the mud.
The rain poured over the land and I ran through the rain. I took my glasses off, and I was more in the world, and less in my head. Less of a boundary between the me and the not-me. I spend more and more time in my head, recently. More time musing over what I am, what I can do, less time being and doing.
The quagmire of introspection as incorrect conjugation.
So I run to conjugate my life differently, to shift the tense of the verb.
I run to get out of my head. I run so that I don't have to decide whether to shower first or have breakfast or whether I should sit down and work on code or write a letter or perhaps first clear up the books on my floor and the piles of newspapers that I must get around to reading. I stand in the middle of my room immobilised with unlimited possibilities and then I grab myself inside and shake my hunched mental shoulders and throw myself out the door just to do something.
Otherwise I'd just dissolve into the carpet. I'd sit in front of the computer all day, leg shaking, brow creased, and slowly I'd just grow flaccid, and then indistinct, lose substance, and sometime they'll come in and find no-one there, just carpet and a mound of newspapers and a blinking cursor. Where I am, was I no more.
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